


Penumbra (Series Two)

by Saki101



Series: Penumbra [2]
Category: Dark Shadows (1966), Dark Shadows - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Blood Drinking, Blood Magic, Dancing, Episode: Sherlock (TV) Unaired Pilot, Fairy Tale Elements, First Dance, Gothic, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Music, Mythical Beings & Creatures, POV John, POV John Watson, Romance, Slow Dancing, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2018-10-21 03:57:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10677195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saki101/pseuds/Saki101
Summary: A gothic AU of the Sherlock universe inspired by the universe of Dark Shadows (the television series), written for theSherlock TV Fusion Miniseries April 2017.Preview:In Maine, there was Collinwood and the three centuries of history that were woven into its walls. In London, there is Holmeswood Manor (or the Manor on Baker Street as the urban legends have it), tucked now into a city street when once its oak woods rolled from the heath to the river.Series One Overview:John grew up with its stories of ghosts and wizards and things that hunt in the night.  They didn’t keep him from interviewing for a residential post at the Manor because he couldn’t afford London on an army pension and there could not possibly have been any truth to the tales.Series Two Overview:It's been more than a year since John came to live at the Manor on Baker Street.  He has learned many things, one being that the stories hadn't prepared him for the half of it.Series 2 -Ep. 1:  Do You Dance?Ep. 2:  AlchemyEp. 3:  HammamEp. 4:  GlazedEp. 5:  ThistleEp. 6:  Leave-taking***





	1. Do You Dance?

**Author's Note:**

> **Series Two, First Episode:** Do You Dance?
> 
> Sherlock's parents announce a brief visit to London to host a ball in what John has come to think of as the fencing room. They require Sherlock's attendance at the event. Sherlock requires John's.

~~~o0o~~~

Some mornings I ache more than others.

I increased the force of the water, turned slowly and let it pummel me. I winced a bit.

The culprit we had pursued over stone walls and down cobbled alleyways that I’m fairly sure no longer exist, had left me with scrapes and bruises, and a deep sense of satisfaction. We had caught up with him amidst the shuttered stalls and iron hooks of the meat market. It had taken the two of us to hold onto him while we waited for Lestrade to catch up. I’m sure the irons he clapped round the scoundrel’s sinewy wrists when he arrived did not met health and safety standards this side of the last century, but I doubt anything less would have held him. 

_He tried to take a bite out of you._

But he failed. 

With some gelatinous substance Sherlock had concocted, I soaped my shoulders and the aches receded. There had been tree climbing; some of the garden walls had been high. I anointed myself afresh; my abraded palms tingled and the aroma of the lather filled the room. 

Sherlock had been wearing the same scent for the past few days. For the longer days and brightening skies, he’d said. 

I raised my hand to my nose and smiled. What soreness our antic pursuit had not inflicted, our later exertions had provided. I inhaled more deeply and the last grogginess of sleep left me. I could feel his mouth at my neck, the teasing drag of his teeth over my skin. I lathered my throat and down my chest. How well we had celebrated our success. 

I stretched, joints cracking, water drumming on my face and chest. We were coming closer, Sherlock and I. Each melody I mastered, each book I read, each chase on which he took me, especially those, shrunk the distance. 

_He doesn’t always take you._

I’m not trained for everything yet.

_Slacking off on the studying, Watson? It’s been more than a year._

I didn't qualify to be a doctor in a year either, no amount of studying could have made it so.

With a little too much vigour, I took the brush to my back and a muscle in my arm cramped. I swore and kneaded my biceps. It was easy to let the time flow by, lost in a book or a song, distracted by the thrill of the chase or that greater pleasure we shared. The cramp eased. I swung the arm forwards and back, felt the blood flow freely again. 

But there was yet a barrier between us I hadn't breached and I longed to reach the other side. I knew there was more to him and I wanted it. Wanted all that he was, the dark and the light and the infinite twilight. 

_Does he know that part?_

He should. I’ve shown him.

_Are you sure?_

I’ve followed him wherever he's led me, defended him, tended him, held his body against mine. I’ve met no one’s passion as I've met his. He must know. 

_There is something you haven’t done._

My hand stopped, dripping soap, above my heart. I could feel its beat.

I’ve given him my _blood_ , freely, happily.

_Getting warmer, Watson._

He’s never asked me to take his.

 _He never asked you to give him yours._

I remained still. It was true.

_Afraid of what you might learn?_

I had no clever comeback for that, but hoped it wasn’t true, because if somewhere, deep down, it was, Sherlock would know and he’d never ask.

Steaming, the water continued to flow over me. Pensively, I finished washing.

A cloud of fragrance followed me from the bath to my room. The curtains billowed in the breeze and on my desk the pages of the autopsy report I had been studying, before our steeplechase across Camden, curled away from the file folder in which it was secured. I seized on it – on its distraction. I smoothed the brittle paper down, eyes running over the headings. Near the bottom, there was an annotation I had overlooked. The writing differed from the back-slanting script of the doctor who had signed and dated the post-mortem examination report. In pencil, almost faded away, someone had printed ‘blackthorn & wild rose’ next to the entry about the splinters broken off beneath the skin of the deceased’s hands. Who had made note of the detail was unclear. I grabbed a sticky note and jotted down yet another theory that might explain the scant facts about this old, cold case Sherlock had given me to study. 

A gust of mild air pushed the balcony doors further open. It carried the faint spring scent of the flowers in the courtyard mingled with the stronger smell of the roses that had bloomed all winter long around my balcony. I closed the file, the corner of the sticky note a splash of colour dividing the length of the folder’s age-bleached cover. Hopefully, I would have a chance to tell Sherlock my theory during the day; perhaps some physical evidence survived on which we could test it. I tugged the towel from around my neck and rubbed it over my hair. Clothing or a bit of jewellery maybe? I didn’t know how long such things were kept; perhaps the paper record was all that remained. Such basic questions. Despite how much I had learned, I was still a novice, well, an apprentice perhaps, but it would be another chance to show him how I was taking every opportunity he gave me to learn more. 

_Go find him._

Easier said than done. I dropped the towel over the desk chair and drifted towards the balcony. 

I heard a faint click. I turned with a smile to find Wiggins standing near the hall door, a number of garments draped over his arm and a large serving tray in his hands wafting the smell of breakfast towards me. My smile disappeared. He stood still, as he so often does. He gets a lot done, but I rarely catch him at it. He regarded me unabashedly. 

I had not bothered tying my dressing gown and he appeared to be taking in all that there was to see. I am not shy and stared right back at him. He looked far less scruffy than usual. His typical stubble had grown in and been neatly trimmed into a moustache and goatee. His hair, too, looked longer and shinier. It had been pulled back. I’d never seen it like that and considered how long it had been since I’d actually laid eyes on him. His clothing, too, was unusual, a black suit that didn’t hang off him and a button down grey shirt with just the collar button open. He looked like he’d come from a job interview. I glanced at his jacket pockets to see if a hastily removed tie was half hanging out. I might have laughed at the idea, if his eyes weren’t still roving over me.

Who was he really? How well did he know Sherlock?

_Jealous, are you? Of scraggly old Wiggins?_

Shut up. You started this. And he’s not so old. Or is he? After all these months, what did I actually know.

“They should fit,” he finally said and moved to the desk and set the tray down. “But we need to check now. There isn’t much time, if they have to be altered.” From inside his jacket he slid out a thick envelope and set it upright against the teapot on the tray. “Since you ain’t dressed, it oughtn’t to take long.” 

He turned to the bed, which was rather a mess. His eyes flicked over it. I didn’t want to think what he could glean from it. He smoothed out a portion of coverlet and set the clothes out.

They were dark, too, but a beam of sunlight pierced the haze above the courtyard and evaded the waving curtains to reveal an array of textures ranging from brocade to satin and silk, all in shades of green with glimmers of gold thread. A cloud passed in front of the sun and they turned dark again in the shadows of the room.

I strode to the desk, still not bothering with the sash of my dressing gown. I’ve never felt self-conscious in a locker room and I wasn’t going to start now in my own bedroom. The envelope was sealed and the writing looked like Sherlock’s, the kind he used to label anatomical diagrams or write out chemical formulae. It was sealed with silvery wax and stamped with an ‘H’. I was using a knife from the breakfast tray to slit the envelope open when I felt hands at my collar.

“We usually have more lead time for dos like that,” Wiggins said and I relaxed the grip that had tightened around the knife.

I set the envelope and blade down and let him slide the dressing gown off my arms; its hem brushed against my legs as he turned away. I slipped the card out from the envelope. It was engraved in pointed letters. “Dos?” I scanned the ornate script framed by a border of vines and fruit and flowers. “On the 20th, here? Where?”

“In the ballroom,” Wiggins answered from just behind me. “If you could step into these.”

I looked over my shoulder and found Wiggins kneeling near my heels and holding out some creamy-coloured cloth with both hands in such a way that a clear opening gaped, ready for my foot to step through it. I stepped obligingly and when he held open another circle of cloth, I did it again. “What are thes…”

He had them up around my waist and was drawing a ribbon snug at my side an instant later. Neatly, he tied a bow. It was by then obvious what they were. 

They were the softest things I had ever had round my nether regions and I had played a bit with the lingerie of some of my girlfriends, but however wispy those had been, elastic had always been involved and none had ever been as comfortable as these.

“If you would raise your arms,” said the voice of Wiggins, who had apparently retreated to the bed and returned behind me while I was lost in contemplation of my new undergarment.

_How easily you are distracted, Watson._

Silence, you.

I complied. Over my head and along my arms fell a cloud of cloth. It was as soft as the drawers, but bleached to a whiteness. 

“Arms down,” he said and I admired the snowfall that drifted from my shoulders when my head emerged.

I felt him securing more ribbons at my wrists. I was going to be quite the maypole by the time I was dressed if we kept on at the same rate. I stretched out the arm whose sleeve ribbons had been tied and noted the drape of the very full sleeve. They’d be great for gesticulating while delivering a speech I supposed, but not so grand for climbing trees or vaulting fences. I examined the long ruffled cuff closed by the three bands of ribbon and the small opening below where the sides of the cuff had been drawn together. 

_Good for hiding weapons._

It was an interesting observation.

Both garments looked to be made of linen, but were more supple than I thought linen had any right to be. That, however, was not the matter uppermost in my mind. Rather, it was their anachronous nature that piqued my curiosity. I reached for the card, considering the words more carefully. There was to be a ball at Holmeswood Manor, no further address was specified. The Master and Mistress of the manor requested the honour of my company at it. The hour the festivities commenced: 10 in the evening; the day of the week: Moonday. 

_I doubt that’s a typo._

I did not disagree.

The date and the month: the 20th day of March. No year. 

_Bulk printing for multiple years._

The first day of spring doesn’t always fall on the 20th. 

_Green garments._

Skipping that quibble, are you?

Carriages at dawn. My brows went up.

_Are you ready to dance all night?_

I narrowed my eyes at the information ornately set forth on the card. What made me think it might be necessary?

_The rustling of the foliage along its edges? The sly faces among the flowers?_

__

__

“These will be easier if you sit,” Wiggins said and pulled out the desk chair.

I sat, a careful eye on the card still in hand and extended a foot when he tapped it. A pale green stocking, the colour of the new buds on the plane trees in the park slipped up my leg and his hands almost fluttered as he tied an equally pale silk ribbon just below my knee then tapped the other foot where he repeated the process.

“Garters? Seriously?” I was going to say more when the image of Sherlock’s long legs in similar attire rose before my mind’s eye. 

_If it’s fancy dress, he could come in some other fashion, as a monk, for example._

I barely stopped myself from snorting at that idea. I would be sorely disappointed though. 

“There’s another pair for the thighs, but it’ll be easier to tie them when you’re standing again.”

I shifted towards the edge of my seat and he patted my knee. 

“Not yet.” He took a folded sheet of paper from his jacket and placed it beneath my foot. “Put your weight on that,” he said. I stood. A pencil appeared in his hand and he traced the outline of my foot with it, muttering to himself. “Sit.”

He eased the paper away and tapped my other foot. We began again. 

I shifted my weight and he cursed. “Up,” he said and marked an ‘x’ through the shape he’d half-drawn in green. “He’ll have my head if these aren’t just right.” He produced another piece of paper and I put my weight on it for him and didn’t move a muscle until he indicated I should lift my foot once more.

 _He? Sherlock?_

A tunic tumbled over my head, the nap brushing past my ears, smelling of sunlit grass. It settled on my shoulders, heavier than the linen, and blocked the faint chill the breeze had left across my chest.

Many’s the night I’ve slept across Sherlock to chase the chill out of him.

The velvet clung to me. It was the colour of ivy. 

When Wiggins had set the garment to hanging just right, he clasped a leather belt tooled with intertwining vines about my hips, its thick brass buckle polished bright. 

It was weighty at my side. I felt a smile lifting my lips. There was another weight I often felt at my side.

_Last night not enough for you, Watson?_

Apparently not.

Near the buckle hung an empty scabbard with chunks of green and gold amber studding its length. I lifted the stiff leather, peered at the stones. There was a tip of uncurled fern in one and an insect’s wing in another. “For your dagger,” Wiggins explained and from the corner of my eye I saw him across the room at my night table. I blinked and he was back before me again. He held the hilt out to me. 

I would have objected to his holding it at all if it hadn’t so quickly been back in my grasp. Sherlock had given it me and it had served me well. My fingers tightened around it. 

Writhing tentacles spewed dark blood as I slashed. My lips pressed tightly together at the memory.

I slid the silver blade into the new sheath. It whispered its approval and the moonstone atop its hilt turned the sunlight that touched it into moonbeams for me. 

‘The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor…’ I hadn’t thought of that poem in years.

Wiggins draped a short cloak over one of my shoulders. It was lined in padded silk, trimmed with twisted green and gold threads. Its folds exuded the same fragrance as the balm in the bath. There was bluebell and violet and rose, always rose...and something else. I study his methods. Most of the smells of his gardens and his laboratory are familiar to me now.

 _And of his skin?_

Yes. And his breath and blood as well.

I lifted the edge of the cloak. A border had been begun in gold threads, a pattern of leaves and flowers, ivy and oak, wood sorrel and holly, foxglove and rose.

_Always rose._

I admired the long thorns that seemed to rise out of the cloth, sharp and golden.

I blinked.

The cloak was whisked away, the belt unbuckled, the tunic lifted over my head.

“You should eat your breakfast,” Wiggins said. He untied the garters, rolled down the stockings. More bows unravelled and the shirt seemed to drift away. “I’ll have these back to you in time.”

“But they fit well,” I protested, missing the softness and the scents already. 

“It’s still a-broidering,” he explained, handing me my dagger. “It’s best to watch that carefully. They can get carried away if someone doesn’t keep an eye on them.”

“They?” I was retreating into monosyllables, it seemed.

“The stitchers,” he said. “He gave them strict orders, but they can be too enthusiastic sometimes, especially if they haven’t had any task but mending in a long while.”

I had an image of manic elves on the model of those of the shoemaker and put my hand to my brow.

“They mind him,” Wiggins said, “but an occasion like this doesn’t come along every day. They’re buzzing, I can tell you, excited and a bit alarmed by the shortness of the deadline. We usually have more time to prepare.”

Somehow my arms were slipping into the sleeves of my dressing gown and Wiggins was arranging it on my shoulders.

“Eat.” 

He began gathering the garments. He had left me with the drawers though. He looked at them now and I pulled my dressing gown closed. “I’ll bring more of those since you like them so well,” he said with a smirk. “They don’t chafe, do they?”

He’s a cheeky bastard, is Wiggins.

I turned my attention to pouring a cup of tea, but I think I was flushing. They certainly didn’t chafe. It was a bit more like they caressed. 

_What was in that bath gel?_

I shook my head gently.

Wiggins was by the door, arms full of clothing. “Don’t bring your tray down; I’ll come back for it. They’re mad in the kitchen now, knives and pots flying about.”

“I’m surprised they could spare the time to make my breakfast,” I said and took a sip of the tea. It was red and, my god, it was good. I think I felt it in my toes. Rose hip, I realised. 

_Always rose._

“They’d just got your tray ready when the messages arrived. Besides, they’d never forget to feed you. Especially now.”

_What does that mean?_

Well, Mrs Hudson and Mrs Turner do seem fond of me.

“Messages?” Back to the one word questions.

“The invites and all the instructions. You should have seen the uproar as they were reading them.”

“My tea’s still hot,” I said aloud. 

_How could all those clothes have even been taken out of a wardrobe, much less tailored to size before the tea got cold?_

“Like I said, it’s a frenzy in the kitchen and all over the Manor, really. There hasn’t been a ball here in years. Unlucky in the lottery, I guess. And three days is nothing for what needs to be done. No choice but to up the pace. But stay clear of the kitchen if you can. Mrs Hudson’s using words down there I ain’t never heard. 

I doubted Sherlock was taking kindly to all the disruption. 

_Yet he addressed your invitation._

What did that mean?

“Do you know where Sherlock is?”

“He almost knocked me over heading down to the firing range as I was coming up.” Wiggins opened the door. “Might be the quietest place in the Manor about now,” he added from the hall. The door shut and I was alone.

I picked up a warm piece of toast and stared at it.

_That’s not possible, is it?_

Apparently, yes.

I finished the toast and raised the cover from a steaming plate of scrambled eggs, rashers and sausage and fried tomato and mushrooms.

_I’m not objecting, mind. But it sort of underscores how much we still don’t know._

“'We' now, is it? I know enough,” I murmured aloud before tucking in.

_But you might ask a few questions._

I might. Such as what on earth the costume is supposed to be. It’s too grand for Robin Hood, although the archery connection would have been pleasing, and I’m too long in the tooth to be Puck or Peter Pan, although my mirror reflected surprisingly flattering images when I gave it a good hard look. Still, boyhood was too far behind me and besides, I didn’t feel lost anymore.

I poured another cup of tea and re-read the invitation. It didn’t specify fancy dress.

*** 

Even with a jumper over my shirt, I shivered. There was a cool draught flowing through the brick-vaulted tunnels as if doors that were normally closed had been opened. I walked faster.

_Doors to the canals?_

The air’s as fresh as over a country river. 

I paused at a place where two corridors crossed. Down one, I could hear the slap of water against stone, a thump, then another, footsteps. I pressed against the wall as two of the older Irregulars strode past, each with a wooden case balanced on one shoulder. I glimpsed a word in an alphabet I did not know as they disappeared the way I had come.

“Right,” I murmured and turned towards the firing range. 

A younger Irregular was mounted on a box next to a wheelbarrow brimming with ivy. He drew out a long vine and looped it over the wrought-iron sconce on the wall. Its ends dangled almost to the floor. He glanced at me when he stepped down. “Good day, sir,” he said and I recognised Kit. He lifted the box and placed it the other side of the barrow under the next sconce.

“Quite the task you’ve got there,” I said. 

“Oh, yes, sir,” he said. “Mr Billy said I have the knack for it though.” He draped another length of young ivy over the back of the sconce and stepped off his box.

Kit was one of the few Irregulars who liked to talk over a meal in the kitchen. He always had a tale of some injured bird or stray cat he had rescued. The Manor had no rats as far as I could tell and that may well have been Kit’s doing. One of the bigger boys was his older brother, but I’d never made so bold as to ask him which one.

“I’m sure you do,” I said. “Carry on, Corporal.” I called him that sometimes.

“Yes, Captain.” He gave me a solemn salute then a smile and trundled his barrow towards the next sconce.

As I passed his box a black cat separated itself from the shadows and trotted after Kit on its three legs.

I hadn’t heard the story about that one.

In front of the door to the firing range, I stopped and listened. I heard a faint thud and then another, but no report. I considered knocking, but the echo it would set up in the tunnels deterred me. The light flickered. I glanced at the sconce by the door and saw that it held a thick candle, whose flame was moving with the current of air. The lamps in this section had been electric the last time I’d been down, like the ones Kit had been decorating. I looked closer at the garland of ivy below the black iron and realised that it was growing down the wall. I gave the vine a gentle tug and felt how firmly its vine was clinging to the brick.

_Maybe the guests will be coming this way._

Not the real issue here, I don’t think. I glanced behind me at the tender shoots of ivy growing along that wall between the sconces and wondered how much time separated this end of the passage from the part where the corridors crossed. And when sunlight had last shone down into them.

I considered asking Sherlock as I pushed the door open.

Thump.

Halfway down the long room, a knife quivered in a plank of wood. The hilts of several more protruded from the board which was roughly the size of a person standing with their arms at their sides.

With hardly a pause, Sherlock plucked another knife from a box on the wooden counter. He didn’t pause to aim. The dagger sliced through the air and joined its brethren deep in the grain of the wood. He grabbed another, a longer one this time, and drew his arm far back, almost as though he threw a javelin. I heard the wood crack when it hit home. He took up yet another.

His shirt was clinging to his back. He had clearly been at it for some time and it worried me because he doesn’t perspire much, unless he’s ill.

The next hit broke the board in two. It fell away and I saw there was another plank behind it. He took up a black knife and held it in his palm as though checking its weight.

I pushed the door closed with my foot.

He whirled round, blade pointed towards me. “John,” he said.

“Bad day?” I asked.

His eyes flashed over me, lingering a little below the waist. “You’ve had the invitation, I see. And a fitting. What do you think?”

“That you’ve invited me to a ball.” He raised an eyebrow. “I know your handwriting,” I said.

He flipped the knife and held out the hilt. I stepped close enough to take it. It was unusually heavy.

“I have no choice but to attend and I can’t do it alone. Not anymore.” He turned back towards the target. 

I followed and stood next to him.

“Not your routine ball, then?” I asked as though ball attendance was an everyday matter for me. 

_You’ve been to a few._

True enough. In dress uniform, no less.

He grabbed a handful of knives and threw them rapid fire at the pristine piece of wood. Near the top of the plank, they formed the outline of a head. He gestured at me with the tip of the last blade. “Care to try?”

I moved over to centre myself in front of the target and he stepped aside. I shifted the knife from one hand to the other, unsure which I would use. When it comes to throwing things, I’ve always been ambidextrous. I chose the left and threw. The blade struck within the outline, a little to one side, where the left eye would have been. I glanced at him. I thought he might smile; it had been a very good first throw. Instead, he scowled.

“Who’s going to be at this ball, then? Hydra, golems?”

“Nothing so straightforward,” he replied and handed me another knife.

I gave the head another eye.

“I’ve had…you’ve been here for more than a year now.”

It was my turn to raise my brows.

Sherlock leaned across me and helped himself to more knives. “My parents are usually oblivious. At least they give the appearance of being so.” He leaned back and started tossing the daggers into the air and catching them. The polished metal caught the firelight. Their rising and falling arc glittered. “It’s not a path many take. People are so impatient. I thought my parents might overlook what we’ve been doing…taking the long route as we have been.”

I scowled now.

_See what I mean about his not telling you everything?_

“The longer you stay, the closer our bond,” he continued, eyes on the turning blades. “Before it becomes too firm, others must be given a chance to woo you away from me.”

My brows must have hit my hairline.

He didn’t see. 

“Or me from you,” he finished.

‘Seeing red’ is an expression I’ve heard all my life. I’d never actually seen it before though. Woo him away, would they? 

“Who are these cocks?”

One by one, he caught the falling knives, looking at me when he had them all clenched in his hand. “I probably should have mentioned this possibility, but my parents haven’t been in touch for years. That suited me.”

I kept my eyes on him. The shade of red was getting brighter, but through its haze I could see him, every detail of the tension around his eyes and the way he was drawing in his lips. He has knowledge and abilities that I am certain I haven’t seen even the half of, but there is something else, too, and I was seeing a hint of it. Who knows how old he is, but he seems very young sometimes and he appeared that way now and a little afraid. 

_Of what?_

The scarlet mist glowed at the edges of my vision. I felt my nostrils flare as I breathed in, heard the faint whistle as I breathed out through parted lips.

He didn't appear to be breathing at all.

I reached out for the long, thin blades. He let them go as my hand closed about them. I held his gaze, hoped he could see that the rage in mine wasn’t at him. Could never be at him. Reluctantly, I turned my eyes away; his expression was hard to parse. I focussed on the target, imagined these interlopers and let loose - hit the imaginary throat, heart, groin. 

As though I had punctured its sphere, the crimson haze leaked away. I let out a long breath and looked at him.

This time there was the merest hint of an upward curl on one side of his lips. He had understood.

“How many of these cocks are there?” I asked and grinned at him.

“Three at least. Possibly more.” He held out his hand to me and asked, “Do you dance?”

I was back to scowling. “Do we really have to?”

He inclined his head slightly. 

“I was thinking brawling might be more the order of the day.”

He shook his head. “Dance is the mode of combat. There are several types of dances, some done in a group, some in pairs, some involve very complex patterns and some involve blades.”

“Seriously?”

His nod was curt. “So, do you dance?”

“It’s not one of my stronger skills.”

“We have three days to raise your game then.”

I nodded decisively and took his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor..." is from _The Highwayman_ by Alfred Noyes (1880-1958).


	2. Alchemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Excerpt:** I put my hands over my face. When I’ve been wild, when he’s been away, when I have lain, sated and breathless beside him, there have been times when I’ve begged him to do whatever he wanted so long as we didn’t stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A full photoset may be seen [here](http://saki101.tumblr.com/post/160030799820/saki101-saki101-they-say-that-wednesdays).

I trod on his toes again. A huff of breath escaped him. I felt it on my forehead.

“You’re resisting, John. For this one, you must follow my lead.” 

He paused and I thought a fuller explanation might be forthcoming, but I was wrong. My muscles betrayed my frustration.

_Where’s your laissez-faire, in his own time, attitude now, Watson?_

He’s too tense. That only ever means danger. And I want to understand what kind.

His hold on me tightened and the fragrance that had suffused my morning bath rose from his skin, richer for being mixed with his sweat. It made me dizzy, although that could have been dehydration from hours of dancing. 

He interrupted my introspection to whisper, “And you have to want to.”

Want. That was the word that summed it all up and he must have felt it burgeoning against his thigh. I inhaled, my chest pushing against his. In bed was where I wanted him, and I would destroy anyone or anything that thwarted me having him. Want. I closed my eyes – upstairs was too far away. The floor would do.

“Use those thoughts,” he murmured, lips brushing the tip of my ear. He stepped away.

Was it an instruction or a plea? I kept myself from snatching him back and squared my shoulders, opened my eyes and waited, watching him. In these matters, he doesn’t often choose to lead.

_But when he does? When it’s the second, or the third, time in a night?_

I put my hands over my face. When I’ve been wild, when he’s been away, when I have lain, sated and breathless beside him, there have been times when I’ve begged him to do whatever he wanted so long as we didn’t stop.

“Yes,” he said, the tone of his voice deeper. “It’s like that, only there will be others watching and we’ll be vertical the whole time.”

Such a cliché. I dropped my hands and laughed. We do laugh at the strangest times. “Aren’t your parents going to be there?”

“Disguise it, transform it, but use it. There’s strength in it,” he replied, drawing himself up. He held my eyes a moment and extended his hand with a flourish.

In the manner he had taught me, I set mine in his. His fingers closed around it and he brought me near again. “Think of the steps like a melody that is playing when we are together. Feel which way I move and come after me.” He clasped my hand more firmly and I felt the rings on his fingers. “It’s a spell for two. We need to survive the other dances… 

_What on earth does that mean?_

“…but this last will be the most important one. If we do it right, anything they try will fail, anything they have cast will be broken.”

Maybe it was his affirmation of danger, or the adrenalin it summoned, but I stopped thinking of my feet as separate things, of myself as a separate being. It was the two of us against everyone else. I pictured the pattern of the dance steps as a sigil glowing on the floor. As Sherlock glided along its knotted contours, I breathed in his fragrance and followed.

I didn’t step on his feet again.

*** 

For two days straight, we danced. That’s how it seemed anyway. There were naps and meals in there somewhere. Every few hours, irresistible food would arrive. Clearly, I was holding my own as some inexplicable priority in the frenzied kitchen. We would sit on a couple of the stools along the wall at the firing range and eat off the trays brought to us. Well, I would eat, and Sherlock would nibble and talk about what constituted a well-executed dance of whatever type we had just been practising. 

Until tonight, that is, when Sherlock waved Wiggins away and finished showing me an intricate set of steps done around two crossed swords. I’d seen dances like it before, but not ones with steps like his. Finally, I replicated what he had demonstrated for me and we headed down the corridor and through half a dozen passageways until we found our dinner waiting for us next to the forbidding oak door marked ‘Apothecary’. Once settled inside, I had set upon the food like a starving man. Sherlock had eaten a few bites and turned his attention to a distillation that was making its way, as bubbles and drips, through a Gordian knot of copper and glass tubing across the room. 

I was torn between hunger and curiosity, including why this chemical process wasn’t occurring in the lab upstairs. Fortunately, I didn’t voice this query because the very question held the explanation. All signs indicated that mayhem reigned on the floors above us and Sherlock objects to mayhem unless he is the one creating it. Mind, I wasn’t complaining about our location. I had never been inside before and was eager to examine what activities were afoot on the enormous ledge carved out of the wall opposite to where I sat. Indeed, the whole room appeared to be have been hollowed out of the ground that lay deep below the London streets, shored up with roughhewn tree trunks of great girth. I forked a succulent bit of roast beef and mustard into my mouth as I contemplated its many aspects. I wasn’t willing to forego my dinner, but I was willing to multitask. 

Chewing appreciatively, I turned to examine the wall which formed the back of the bench on which I sat. Here and there, the light from the candle flames reflected off something in it. I ran my hand over the dark surface. It was rough and dry. I dusted off my hand and lifted the candle from the small table holding my dinner. Not far from me, a rounded protuberance gleamed. Holding the candle closer, I felt about the nodule. It came away in my hand.

“What…”

Sherlock turned, the flacon he held by long, iron tongs leaving a faint cloud of fragrant steam in its semi-circular wake. 

“Ah,” he said, coming closer.

The scent reminded me of the new lotions in the bath, only sharper. More like our sheets in the morning.

“Show me,” he said.

I held up the stone. “The place isn’t going to come tumbling down on us, is it?”

“If building the Underground didn’t disturb it, I doubt you will,” he replied and leaned closer.

The hint of a smile brightened his face.

_Haven’t seen many of those these past couple of days._

I had succeeded in eliciting a few, but solemn and intent had more often been Sherlock’s expression and I had applied myself all the harder because of it. The diagrams of the dances where burnt into my brain; the music he played for me, memorised; the feel of the movements he’d taught me becoming second nature to my muscles. I had slept, but it hadn’t been much and I had danced in my dreams, with him mostly, but sometimes alone around two swords as in the dance he had shown me just before dinner.

“I thought it was a bone at first,” I said, “partly because of the rounded end and partly because I’ve been to the catacombs beneath Paris. But it’s too shiny.”

“And the plague pits are to the south and east anyway,” Sherlock remarked.

“So, what is it?” 

“Gypsum, selenite…it has different names. Waterstone might be the one that appeals to the poet in you,” he said.

I held the candle higher and was rewarded with more gleams.

“Because of the river?”

“Because of the sea that was here. But that was long ago.”

I turned to look at him. “We’re talking geological time now.”

“Mm.” He stretched over the bench and brushed his hand along the wall. Several bits of stone fell onto the cushions covering the ledge. Deftly, he plucked them from their tufts, waving the aromatic flask about as he did. 

“If it’s crumbling, shouldn’t the wall have some sort of sealant on it?” 

“No, no, she likes to breath,” he said and dropped the collected stones into my palm. “And she’s not…crumbling.”

With one more glance at the wall, I shifted my attention to the rocks that had so easily come loose. “Selenite – from Selene, so it’s moonstone?” I asked, moving my hand a little under the candle light and watching the pearly reflections. I was trying to remember some of my youthful geology, an enthusiasm that had followed my astronomy phase and preceded my medical one.

“Different minerals, but related name,” Sherlock said. “And they were both believed to wax and wane with the moon.” 

He passed his hand over the wall again and a few more pieces fell and he gathered them. “A mark of favour, John,” he said, adding them to the collection in my palm and stroking my fingers as he took his hand away.

I stared up at him, waiting to hear what more he would say. His face looked less tense than it had been.

“A good sign,” he said and touched the wall again. He dropped the small stone that came lose then into the flask he was holding and whirled back to his work table. The motion wafted the scent around the room.

The memory of my first glimpse of him outlined half in moonlight, half in firelight flashed before my inward eye and I closed my hand around the milky stones.

“You should finish eating,” he added over his shoulder. “We have to practice more.”

My feet gave twinges of protest, but I set upon the dinner with renewed gusto so we could get back to it and had nearly emptied my plate when two sharp raps reverberated through the door.

“Come,” Sherlock said, without turning.

Wiggins appeared kneeling by my side. 

I glanced at the massive oak door. It was firmly shut. I had neither heard it open nor close.

His hands were at the laces of my trainers. “If you would…” Wiggins said.

I frowned at him and realised he had a shoe in hand: a soft leather shoe, covered in embroidered leaves and flowers and birds. I moved my foot out from under the table.

“Stand,” Sherlock said, appearing behind Wiggins’ crouched form.

Wiggins tugged the bow of the second shoe tight and scuttled aside.

I stood.

Sherlock kept his eyes on my face.

I was definitely standing, but my feet barely registered the stone floor. I broke into a huge grin. 

“Are the rest of John’s clothes ready?”

“The stitchers’ buzzing hurts my ears it is so high-pitched,” Wiggins complained, touching one ear. “What hides behind and peeks through is done. Now they are finishing the vines that conceal.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at Wiggins.

“By mid-day tomorrow, is my guess.”

Sherlock’s eyebrow went up and Wiggins edged towards the door. “I’ll urge them on. I will,” he promised, hunching his bony shoulders and raising the door’s latch.

“The _instant_ they are ready, bring them to John’s room.” Sherlock said and turned away, dismissing Wiggins with a flick of his fingers.

The sound of the door closing eluded me again, yet when I looked Wiggins was indeed gone. 

I took a step towards Sherlock and stood very straight. The closer I am, the taller he seems, but the difference was less pronounced at that moment. The shoes didn’t have heels; they were more of a glove or a leather sock with ties, but there was a pressure beneath my arches which brought to mind the way Sherlock massages my feet when he feels he has dragged me through London rather longer than my mortal bones can withstand. 

Raising a hand, I rested it on his shoulder and rose on the tips of my toes. It seemed to bring me higher than usual; his lips were almost in reach.

He looked down at me and that brought them close enough.

I am a good kisser…

_You are an arrogant prick._

…but Sherlock lifted his beautiful lips away.

“What? Do we have to wait until after I’ve dispatched those cocks? Is that some sort of rule?”

That got a twitch of those rosy lips. “No,” he said, his eyes on my mouth. “No such rule.”

“Good.” My hand slid to the back of his neck and I rose on my toes once more. He didn’t move away this time and I suckled and nipped at those soft, fine lips until he clutched me so tightly, I didn’t need my feet for support at all.

“John,” he murmured, when I gave us a moment to breath.

I hummed in reply and touched the tip of my tongue to that delicate join where his lips come together.

He moved us back towards the bench and let me sit when my legs hit the edge of it. I’d lost his lips though. I gazed up at them. The candlelight made them glisten and they were far too far away.

He swayed and I reached out for him, grabbing his hips and scattering the stones I’d still had in my hand. I looked up. He braced his forearm against the wall and formed an arch above me.

“Steady,” I said and smoothed my hands along his hips.

They swayed towards me.

“Ah,” I said and accepted that invitation, too.

 

The air seemed to flutter with his sounds and his final cry to startle the echoes into flight.

Oh, he was sweet. I carried on suckling as though I could bring him on again. I have done it, when I’m gentle enough and slow.

He groaned and I relented, drawing softly away with light kisses. I looked up.

His head rested against his forearm; his mouth open as he panted.

“Come down here,” I begged, for I needed his lips against mine again.

It was more a slide than anything else, his hands dragging past my shoulders and down my chest to my thighs. He settled on the floor between my legs, head lolling forward. I cradled it between my hands and kissed his flushed face. “Sweet,” I whispered and swiped my tongue over his lower lip. “You are so sweet.” 

“Nectar,” he murmured, “honey.”

He sat back on his heels and his head dropped to my thigh. I stroked his curls away from his face. He sighed and closed his eyes.

“I’ve more work to do,” he murmured.

I hadn’t been sleeping much since the preparations for this ball had disrupted our life far more than Lestrade and all the wayward beasts of London ever had. I ran the back of my fingers down his cheek. He’d shaved, but his hair looked as though it hadn’t been combed in days. I hadn’t seen him sleep at all. He shuffled closer, rubbed his forehead against the side of my stomach and wriggled one arm behind my hips. It wasn’t the best position in which to take a nap, but he was drifting off and if I roused him enough to get him to stretch out on the bench, he was likely to leap up and return to his concocting. So, I buried my fingers in his snarled curls, leaned back against the cushions and let my eyes roam over the mysterious chamber of the apothecary.

Across the room, his distillation process carried on with soft burbles. It didn’t appear in danger of exploding anytime soon so I let my mind wander. Who, I wondered idly, kept the copper coils bright and the glass vessels shining? The thought that it might be Wiggins made me scowl. At least he had knocked; his usual disconcerting habit of simply appearing didn’t seem to apply to the Apothecary’s Room. 

_Perhaps the door was locked._

I smiled at the thought and then realised Sherlock had not let him in.

_There was a cadence to the word, ‘come’._

True, and who knows how Sherlock might unlock things. 

I had tunes for opening and unlocking, but I’d never tried it on a door Sherlock had made secure.

_Would probably be unwise to try._

I hummed assent, my head listing towards my shoulder. I rubbed my free hand over my face; it wouldn’t do to leave Sherlock’s brewing completely unattended. And, I had been curious about this room that Mrs Hudson had passed by without a word. There didn’t seem to be many things Mrs Hudson was quiet about, but this had definitely been one of them.

_How would you know, if she’s being quiet?”_

Well, we walked right by on my tour last year. Every other nook and cranny had a story attached.

_Maybe she didn’t think you saw it._

It was clear as day, with a sign and everything. I considered. Had she thought I hadn’t seen it?

_Sherlock’s intrigued by what you can see and where you can go. I bet this is one of those places._

I looked more carefully around the room, this strange, deep room, with Sherlock’s head heavy against my thigh as he slept. There were uneven lines in the grey walls, like the rings of a tree trunk, only vertical. 

I chuckled at the vertical bit. It jostled Sherlock and he snuffled. I rubbed my fingertips against his scalp and his breathing settled.

The chamber was rectangular, with the table ledge running along most of the wall opposite, matched by the lower ledge on which I sat, which was cut in half by the door to the hall. Both the table and the benches ended short of the large fireplaces that filled the narrow walls. 

The closer hearth was wide and high, the kind you could walk into. It bristled with iron hooks from which pots might hang. A mound of charcoal was all that was in it now. I could feel the draft from its chimney. It had trailed a ghost of ash along the glossy floor, which looked to be paved with flint. The candle light glimmered in its dark circles. 

The other hearth was narrow and low. Above and to each side metal doors of various sizes were firmly latched. I supposed they were ovens or warming niches. The room didn’t feel like it had ever been a kitchen, although I supposed it could have been. The design of the ironwork was old and heavy, but I didn’t see any rust or even ash on it. The hinges caught the light a bit – well-oiled, I thought.

Sherlock’s breath was moist at my groin. I adjusted myself, sunk a little lower against the cushions and tried to distract myself by considering the ceiling. 

Bunches of dried leaves and flowers dangled from the dark timbers that criss-crossed it high above my head. Whatever was between the beams was lighter than the walls and shards of something that reflected the light were embedded in it, too. I hoped none of it would be raining down on us.

I spread my hand over the side of Sherlock’s head.

My gaze swept to the floor and I spotted a few of the stones I had dropped. They looked like flattened pearls from where I lounged or moonlit raindrops. I’d get them later. They had felt good in my hand. 

Sherlock rubbed his cheek against my thigh and let out a sigh. That felt good, too.

I smoothed back his hair, traced a circle at his temple. He must have been exhausted to fall asleep like this.

_What’s so important about what he’s doing in here?_

I peered into the dark corners, squinted at the shadows at the side of the stone ledge. There were several baskets there, covered with straw mats. From one a spray of white roses hung over the edge. They looked like ones from my balcony. There was one red bloom on a thick, thorny stem entangled with them. Blood red.

I looked down at Sherlock. He was very pale, the blue of the vein at his temple visible beneath his skin.

_He needs blood._

There’s plenty in the fridge in the lab.

_Your blood._

There’s some of that in there, too.

_Fresh._

Beneath his eyes, the skin looked bruised.

_Remember how quickly it healed him?_

I ran my hand down over his shoulder. I did remember. The lines of pain had eased around his eyes, the grey had left his cheeks and the jagged edges of his wounds had joined together right before my eyes.

He’d ask, if he needed it fresh.

_He didn’t ask then. He’s never asked since. Don’t act like you don’t know that._

His head shifted on my lap, the hand behind my back tightening and pulling me forward as though he were adjusting a pillow.

_Even his lips have gone pale._

They had. The rosiness of arousal had faded. I touched a fingertip to them.

A hand closed about my wrist like a vise and his eyes opened. They were clear and very bright.

“John.”

“Were you dreaming?”

He didn’t reply at first. His grip on my arm loosened, but he didn’t let go.

“Dreaming might be the closest word for it,” he said and touched his lips to the insides of my fingers. “I’m sorry I left you…”

If there was more to the sentence it was muffled by his releasing my hand and moving his attentions to the front of my jeans.

“Whoa, Sherlock, a little warning,” I gasped, starting up.

“You don’t really mean that,” he replied, unbuckling, unzipping and otherwise laying me bare. 

“Well, I…”

He was brushing his parted lips along the length of me, hardly touching, his breath cool, the tip of his tongue inquisitive.

I collapsed back against the cushions with a shiver. “Well, I…” 

He’d taken me in; speech was a lost cause. I sighed instead as his fingers traced the skin beneath the loosened waist of my jeans and his tongue pressed me against the inside of his teeth.

He was intent.

  


My arm flew out to the side, over the top of the cushions, fingers scrabbling at the wall. I felt a need to hang on.

His fingers pressed further beneath the denim, chill and insistent. I lifted my hips and he grasped my buttocks firmly, pushing me deeper into this mouth.

The seconds stretched out; the pressure increased. My toes curled in my soft new shoes and I shouted so loudly I’m sure my voice carried up the chimney and frightened the pigeons.

“My god,” I moaned, eyes squeezed shut as he let me go with a lick. “That was…that was…”

“Overdue?” Sherlock offered and I opened an eye to look at him.

He’d sat up on his knees and was daintily dabbing at a trickle of semen near the corner of his mouth.

I panted, listing sideways on the cushions. It wasn’t physically possible, but in my head, I wanted him again, wanted it to somehow go on and on. “Extraordinary,” I breathed, my eyes on those beautiful, pale lips.

“Expedient,” he insisted and made to stand, “we have much to do.”

He stumbled.

It is not something Sherlock does.

I reached out and caught him round the thighs, guided him down. He landed in a tangle, knocking the air out of me. I grasped him more firmly; he was half on the bench, half off. 

“John!” he protested and wiggled.

“Stay still for a while,” I said and held him tighter still.

He huffed in a pretense of exasperation, but I could feel his muscles relaxing and he pulled his legs up onto the bench. “Just for a minute.”

“Or two,” I said and kneaded his back.

“Or two,” he mumbled and I realised he was falling back to sleep.

_That’s not normal._

No.

_Blood, Watson._

Blood. 

I stretched one hand above my head feeling for the throwing dagger I had brought along from the firing range. It had seemed the right weight for hiding up a sleeve and I had set it beside me on the bench.

All my fingers found among the tufts of the cushions were more pieces of the pearly stone, some smooth, some jagged, but no knife.

Against my chest, Sherlock breathed shallowly.

_Now would be a good time, Watson. Only a day left. Lots to do._

Do you hear me arguing?

I ran my hand along the wall. I could feel the pocks from which the stones must have fallen, but none of their edges were sharp enough to cut my skin. I switched hands, steadying Sherlock atop me with one and reaching down to the floor in hopes of finding a stone that had broken as it fell or perhaps the missing knife. I found one of the stones.

I held it in front of my face. It was clearer than most of the others and had split neatly in half. I touched one of the edges to my lip. It felt sharp. My lip would be easier to cut than a finger.

_You could have bitten your lip._

Harder to do deliberately than one might think and I’ve got the stone now, thanks.

I held my lower lip taut with my teeth and swiped at it with the edge of the stone. The third attempt stung and I tasted my blood.

_Finally._

I wiped my forefinger on my shirt a few times, stuck it in my mouth then dabbed at the drop of blood.

_It’s not very much._

Enough for a start, I suppose.

I dragged my bloody finger across the seam of Sherlock’s lips, moistened it again at my own and repeated the process.

My blood seemed usually dark on my forefinger, but the light was not strong. I aggravated the cut with my teeth and managed to bleed enough to continue. After the fourth application, his mouth began to look like the red rose in the basket. It looked so kissable. 

He licked me. “Your finger’s not cut,” he said and bent his head back to get a look at me. “How did you cut your lip?”

I held up the bloodied stone.

He got up on his elbow and stared at me. “Where did you read about doing this?”

I shook my head. “Nowhere.”

He pulled himself further along my body and peered down at me. The candlelight was erratic, but I thought the skin beneath his eyes looked less bruised.

“How could you have known?” he asked and bent closer.

“What?” I asked before his tongue darted out and tasted the blood from its source. 

The cut stung until he covered my mouth completely, tongue stroking the wound. As he persisted, a great lethargy rolled over me and I closed my eyes. It was not like the times with a syringe at all.

I inhaled lazily when he lifted his lips from mine, as though breathing were optional.

“That the moon likes little better than to have her stones draw blood,” he murmured between little licks at my chin. I supposed some of the blood might have dripped there.

“Blades used to be made of the stones just for that purpose.”

“I didn’t know,” I murmured, imagining such a blade, a small, sharp thing, like a lancet, that I could always keep with me. “You were tired.”

He pinched my lip. I felt it sting afresh and then he kissed the sting away. “I am not tired now,” he said between kisses.

“No,” I agreed, feeling how he was supporting most of his weight on one of his arms now. I stretched out beneath him. There had been a time in a field; the scent of flowers was the same. But that may have been in a dream, so often my dreams are of him. 

His arm slipped behind me and lifted. I felt him push the cushions away. The clay was cold on my bare skin, hard beneath my back. Small stones scraped against my spine, but I thought it would be pleasant to sleep anyway. To sleep to the rhythm of the tides, rocking me back and forth on the shingle, cool water swirling about me until it had washed my fatigue completely away.

I woke up on the floor, well, on the hearthstone actually, although there were cushions beneath me again. My clothes were absent, except for my shoes, which were keeping my feet nice and warm and my shirt, which was draped over my side. On the flags of the fireplace, a mound of the pearly stones was glowing in white light bright enough to show where there had once been a bas-relief of robed figures carved into the stone walls of the firebox. I wanted to lean forward and peer up the chimney, but I didn’t have the strength. I thought I’d find the moon shining directly down it. One of those really bright full moons that come at perigee. I stretched out my hand instead and touched the nearest stone. It felt pliant, like a ripe fruit and the light felt cool and pleasant on my skin. I closed my eyes again.

There was a rustling sound, a crackling of twigs.

“Don’t go back to sleep yet, John,” Sherlock said, somewhere behind me. “You need to drink something first.”

His voice has a pull on me. I rolled onto my back as he knelt by the cushions. He was as pale as the moonlight, but the skin around his eyes wasn’t dark anymore.

“I feel like I could sleep for a week,” I said.

“I was more fatigued than I realised,” he replied, holding up a small flask. “But you won’t need a week.”

I considered sitting, but my head didn’t feel ready for it. “That’s good, since we don’t have a week to spare.” I rolled onto my side facing him and propped myself up on an elbow, although I didn’t think the elbow part was going to last. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Two hours. The moon’s risen,” he said. “Drink and you can sleep for a few more, if you like.”

Didn’t seem very likely that I wouldn’t like to.

_Is he giving you a hint?_

Was he?

I took the flask and sniffed. It smelled like all the flowers I like, some of which I’m quite sure shouldn’t be ingested, but I took a sip anyway. I smelt honeysuckle and lilac, lily-of-the-valley…a favourite of my nan’s; a little violet maybe, but above all, rose. I took another sip and the smells and the tastes converged. It was every memory of spring condensed on my tongue, rising to my brain, then drifting away. I wanted them back. I tipped the flask up and let the brew flow down my throat. I handed the bottle back empty.

He took it, shook it slightly and continued gazing at me. I wondered if the drink had been to share and I had guzzled it all down. I touched my lip.

“It’s healed,” he said.

I wasn’t surprised, but I regretted that it was gone so soon. At least I could have shared that.

“I could open it again.” His gaze dropped to my mouth.

It shot throw me then, a lust so intense I fell back on the cushions.

_You’re not a teenager anymore, Watson._

“I wish I was.”

“What do you wish you were, John?” His eyes were intent on mine now.

“That I was young enough to take you as often as I want you,” I said and raised my hand a few centimetres off the cushions. I couldn’t hold it aloft very long. It dropped just above his knee. Weakly, I gave his leg a squeeze. He is just muscle and bone. My hand slid away.

His gaze left my face and travelled along my body. “We do have certain other things we need to do from time to time.” He set the flask aside and stood. From my vantage on the floor, he seemed incredibly tall and then, from on high, garments began to fall. 

I had the strength to raise my eyebrows.

_Possibly, you are still asleep._

Let’s not wake up then. 

I looked down my body. One part of me, clearly did not feel fatigued.

Definitely, no waking up.

“There are preparations to be completed,” Sherlock continued, kneeling over me, a knee to each side of my thighs. “But at this season, it would be unkind of me not to help you.” 

His fingertips were cool against my heated skin. He traced them teasingly over me in spirals and undulating lines.

“Are you writing on me?” I asked.

He looked up from his designs. “Not yet,” he said, holding my gaze. He reached one cool hand between us, then lowered himself slowly onto me.

My head fell back as the sensations radiated out from where we were joined. Slowly he rose and slowly he fell again, slowly, slowly. I craned my neck to see the space between us disappear. I wanted to watch it re-appear and be obliterated over and over, but I couldn’t keep my head raised.

He stretched towards me, his hand curving around my neck and kissed me. I opened my mouth and his tongue thrust and delved in counterpoint to the slow, steady rhythm of his hips. 

I managed to move one hand enough to grasp above his knee. I felt his muscles flex as he rose and fell. I wanted to join him, to thrust up, wrap my legs around his back and pull him down, but I didn’t have the strength.

Even my feeble efforts bore fruit. His kisses grew wilder. He nipped at my mouth. 

I wished it still bled. I wished. I bit his lip – hard.

He made a surprised sound as his blood began to flow.

It was spring and summer and autumn and winter. I suckled and bit and gulped.

He moaned and I sucked harder. He slammed down and ground himself against me. I bent my legs and pushed up and up again and again and on his lip, I bit down. The taste flooded through me. He shuddered then and groaned. I pressed my palm against the small of his back and pushed up. He groaned again. More and more of his weight was falling on me and still I pushed up, higher, deeper, and fast, growling. His hand dropped from the back of my neck, his head drooped onto my chest. I wrapped my arms around him as I flowed into him and the distance between us disappeared and didn’t return.

*** 

Sherlock was still with me when I woke next. I smiled at that. It’s not often the case.

He was sitting across my thighs and drawing a fingertip through the wetness that I assumed was his semen on my chest. This I could feel rather than see as his bowed head was in the way. Judging by the wetness, I hadn’t been asleep long.

“Writing time now?” I mumbled.

“Yes. Shh. Don’t move.” He didn’t look up from his endeavour. 

The patterns felt intricate and I felt wonderful. I would have liked to stretch, but I resisted.

I peered down my chest. I couldn’t see much. The candles must have burnt out because the only light in the room was a faint one emanating from the fireplace. I tried glancing to the side without moving my head. It wasn’t ideal. The moon had left its perfect alignment with the chimney and the dim glow that remained looked to be from the pile of stones. I wasn’t sure how that could be.

“You can have your blade in a moment,” Sherlock said. “Only three more, but you need to turn over for me to do them.”

“Doesn’t your design need to dry?”

He rose to his knees. “No need. The patterns are in your skin now.”

“I have tattoos?” I peered down my chest. I didn’t see anything except a bit of shine where the skin was wet.

“No. These aren’t visible except to those who need to be warned.”

Obligingly, I turned over, rubbing past Sherlock’s thighs in the process. My skin tingled from the contact and as I settled on the cushions, I couldn’t help a little rub against the tufts. “Am I awake?”

“Yes. Why…”

I squirmed against the cushions again. 

He reached between my legs and under my balls. “Ah. I thought the draught I gave you would give you some relief.”

“From what?”

“It’s your season, John. You must have noticed before now.”

Until I’d been shot, my private life had always been rather active, though in the spring a young man’s fancy and all that. “Well, yeah, but not like this.”

“You’re here now,” he said, sliding his hand away.

I didn’t like that. I wanted it right back where it had been.

“I was here last year.” And he’d been in my bed by this time then, but it hadn’t been like this. The memory still made me sigh. It was a very good one.

He smoothed his hand over my buttocks. “You’ve been here, with me, for more than a year now.”

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned that. Is the year thing really so important?”

“It is for certain creatures.” He sat back down, lower on my legs this time. “I’ve made a couple significant mistakes, I’m afraid.”

That was an unusual statement. I turned my head to look over my shoulder at him. “You misjudged your parents’ awareness of our living arrangements and certain consequences flowing from that – what else?”

He was kneading my arse and it was bloody distracting. “Are you doing that deliberately?”

He kissed one arse cheek and then the other.

“What other mistake?”

“If I help you out again, will you lie still so I can finish my designs on this side?”

“You ran out of spunk.”

“They are complicated designs.” He slipped a finger between my buttocks, lingering here and there, pressing softly.

“Oh, my god!”

“Shall I help you with your little difficulty again?” His tongue followed the path of his finger.

“God, yes!” I pushed my bum up at him then bit the side of my hand to regain a little control. “I still want an answer. I’m not going to forget.”

“All right,” he said and then his tongue was busy with other things.

*** 

When consciousness returned this time, I could smell food – breakfast, to be precise.

I rubbed my face on the cushions. I hoped Wiggins hadn’t brought it in while I was naked on the floor with my arse in the air.

“He left it outside in the hall,” Sherlock said. “I brought it in after he departed.”

That was a mercy. I turned over and stretched, long and audibly.

Sherlock brought the little table with the food on it over to me. When he set it in place, his dressing gown fell open. It was a good look on him. 

_Everything’s a good look on him._

Pretty much.

I sat up and reached for the cup of tea that was already poured. There was a narrow parcel wrapped in a chamois situated between the cup and the teapot. I took a sip of the tea. It was perfect. “What’s this, then?” I asked, tapping the parcel.

“When I finished the designs, you were still asleep, so I made a hilt for your blade.”

I set the cup on the floor and picked up the package. It had a nice heft. I unrolled the cloth. Inside, there was a knife with a wooden handle and a stone blade, a pearly stone blade, chipped along both sides to create cutting edges. I tested it against the pad of my thumb; blood welled up from the cut. “Definitely passed the sharpness test,” I said and held my thumb up to Sherlock.

He blinked at me.

“Pity to waste it,” I said, moving it back and forth. The blood was starting to run down the finger. “Going to make a mess in a minute.”

He crouched down and took my wrist. “You’re sure?”

“Very sure,” I said.

He licked the drip with his tongue then closed his mouth over the finger.

It was such an incredible feeling and I already felt marvellous. I closed my eyes to savour it until he took his mouth away. He kissed the base of my thumb.

“Thank you,” he said. “That’s a fine way to start the day.”

I opened my eyes. “As good as tea?” 

“Definitely.” He sat down cross-legged on the cushion next to me and took a slice of apple from the tray. 

I glanced at my thumb. The cut was already gone. “Ta,” I said and wiggled it at him.

“Anytime.”

I took another sip of tea and picked up the knife. The smear of blood on it was disappearing into the blade. “What is it made of?”

He smiled. "I forged it in the moonlight. It’s an art not many have mastered."

“I imagine.” I tried holding the dagger in each hand. It fit well in both.

“But this one nearly made itself,” he said. “The stones wanted to be your knife. No one can use it against you or for any purpose you don’t want it to be used. Anyone who tried would be very sorry.”

I turned my wrist with the dagger in my hand. “An excellent quality in a weapon,” I observed, “which means I wanted to cut myself just now.”

His smile grew wider. “Apparently so.”

“And the wood?”

“The handle is oak and the quillons rosewood,” he said and he sounded proud.

“You managed this while I slept?”

“The wood was here. I keep strong pieces until I know what to use them for.”

I wrapped up the blade and set it back on the table. I didn’t want to put it down actually, but I had nowhere else to keep it, being naked and all. 

“We’ll have a proper sheath made, but for now, we may have to improvise. This one is to be worn inside your clothing. This one’s not for others to see. She’s always a surprise.”

I rubbed my fingers over the chamois. “I’m going to like having her near to hand.”

He leaned across me and took another piece of apple.

“I haven’t forgotten though,” I said, picking up my tea cup.

“Oh?”

“What was the other mistake?” I asked and took a sip.

He ate the apple and dropped a seed on the tray.

“Sherlock.”

He turned on the cushion to face me. “You’re not who you think you are, John.”

_Wasn’t expecting that._

No.

“I’m not?”

He raised a finger. “More accurately, you’re not what you think you are.”

I stopped drinking my tea. I could see he was preparing his words.

“You were fascinated with the stories of the Manor.”

“Since I was a child,” I replied.

“Attracted to this place.”

I nodded.

“But not only this place. There have been other places that intrigued you,” he continued.

I nodded. There had always been places that called to me or that I regretted having to leave. “There was a wood behind my grandparents’ house. When we visited, I would spend all day there if the weather was dry, and sometimes when it wasn’t. I never really wanted to go home. I figured it was just because home was often not such a great place to be.”

Sherlock put his hand on my knee. “No doubt that played a part, but it wasn’t the whole reason.”

“What is the whole reason, then?”

“You belong in the wood,” he said.

“But I love London,” I said.

“It was all woods once. You know that. You saw them with your own eyes. I really should have realised then,” Sherlock said.

“You were injured that night,” I replied, remembering the mighty trees I saw from the roof and Sherlock so weak he could barely stand.

“But afterwards, I should have figured it out.”

“So, why didn’t you?”

“They’re rare now, the green folk. And most that remain mingle very little. I’ve never met one…before.”

“So, I’m improbable.”

Sherlock smiled. “Very.”

“And I shouldn’t be loving cities and roaming around through throngs of people.”

“You took to being sequestered very readily,” he remarked and I saw him counting up signs that he’d missed. “And you saw things I didn’t think you’d be able to see. And you’ve learned very fast.”

I watched his face as the thoughts raced through.

“And your blood is very strong,” he said.

I thought he coloured a little at that. “What did you think I was?” It was becoming clear that he’d never thought I was entirely human.

“I didn’t know, but if you stayed, I thought I might find out.”

“You’ve been experimenting on me!” I exclaimed. “The different fragrances, the food. Mrs Hudson’s in on it!”

“Not exactly. I told her you needed a special diet. I gave her a few guidelines and instructed her to keep track of what pleased you, how you reacted to different dishes. She rather liked the idea. She’s never developed her full potential either, her real gift isn’t for dance, although she has a minor talent for it and for music as well. No, her real gift is botanical. She’s assisted me sometimes, and there’s serious potential there. You got her focussed on it again.”

“Glad I could be of help.” I finished the tea and poured myself another cup. “But if this has been going on since I walked in the door, more or less, what’s different now?”

“Tonight, it will have been a year and a day since we became lovers,” he said, thoughtfully. “Particular periods of time have an effect on magical beings. They can serve as catalysts or intensifiers or nullifiers.”

“Yeah, but things didn’t start going totally nuts until this ball lark got started.” I took a bowl of fruit and speared a piece of pineapple and held it out to Sherlock.

He looked surprised, then leaned forward and took it off the fork. He looked around the room as he chewed.

“Maybe I should have brought you here before. Being deep in the clay seems to be having an effect.” He stroked his hand along the side of the fireplace. “The London clay definitely likes you.”

“But I was feeling different before we came in here,” I pointed out.

His attention returned to me, gaze sweeping over me like a searchlight. It stopped at my lap.

I looked down, grabbed my shirt off the cushion and wadded it up over my groin.

He pinched the end of a sleeve and pulled the cloth away. 

“I think…it might be the celebration,” he said. “It’s a ball for the vernal equinox. The house is full of more activity than you have ever experienced here and it’s all revolving around vines and flowers and…” He dropped the shirt and smoothed his hand along the inside of my thigh.

I let out a long sigh.

“It’s a celebration of rebirth, sexuality, fertility.”

His hand was doing soft, playful things in my lap.

“It’s your feast. That’s what you’re responding to; that’s why you’re insatiable.” His touches were so light they were nearly ticklish. “This is your season. It’s your role.” He grasped me firmly. “John, they’re all going to want you tonight.”

I set my bowl aside, grabbed a handful of his curls and guided his head down to my lap.

“They can’t have me. That role is for you.” 

An image of someone else holding Sherlock’s head down as I was made me choke. It took me a moment to find my voice again. “And they cannot have you.” 

Sherlock’s tongue flicked and stroked. I clutched his arm. “Shouldn’t we be practicing dancing?”

His hand reached up and pushed me over. He crawled atop me, panting. “You know all the steps now. They’re on your skin, in your blood. All you must add, all you must surpass them at, is passion.” 

I pushed up and rolled him over. His eyes were gleaming, his lips were swollen. My knees tightened on either side of his hips, my forearms at his shoulders. I leaned down and breathed in the scent of blood and fruit on his breath. “They could not,” I said, hovering above his mouth, “even come close.”


	3. Hammam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preparations for the ball conclude. Their entrance is made and several characters are met.
> 
>  **Excerpt:** “The little I thought I knew, I have to unlearn,” I said. “I didn’t mean to give offense.”
> 
> His shoulders relaxed. “Yes, well, fairy gold is an illusion, a glamour. It has its uses, of course, but that’s not what these are.”

Against the back of my eyelids, the darkness turned red. It faded. I inhaled the scent of the sea, heard the pattering of pebbles sliding down a sloping bank, tumbling onto the foreshore. Consciousness dawned. I rolled away, curled around the dark throb of sensation at my centre and sunk below the horizon.

The flash was scarlet. 

I sat up, heart pounding, eyes darting around the dim room. 

There. He was there. Bent over his workbench, half obscured by the vapours rising from his retorts.

My breathing slowed. My eyes adjusted to the half-light. He hadn’t dressed. I was transfixed.

He reached across the ledge, fingers outstretched and curved. When he pulled them back from the wall, they were dark with clay. He scraped it off with a knife into something in front of him that I couldn’t see.

Steam rose about him then, swirling over his head, droplets forming in his curls. The lightning struck, forked and brilliant and blinding.

I started up, blinking. “Sherlock,” I gasped.

“There you are, John,” he said.

As though I’d gone somewhere!

“Are you burnt?” I asked, trying to get limbs to work that were still asleep. 

“Yes.” He moved closer to where I stood, an earthenware bowl in his hand and the drops of water gleaming like stars in his unkempt hair. I narrowed my eyes at him, scanning for injuries. His thighs and upper arms were smudged as though he’d been wiping his hands on them. 

"Where?" I needed to run my hands over him to understand. I stepped forward.

He shook his head. The droplets flew, sizzling on his shoulders. “I’m too hot. Sit back down, have some tea, it’ll only be a few more minutes before the last of your rings is done and then I'll cool.” He tilted the bowl towards me and I saw that what he kneaded with his fingers, gleamed.

My gaze swept over him again.

The cloud had followed him. It was raining softly. Water trickled over his shoulders. It added to the steam.

I stepped back. My heel hit the cushions and I sat. “All right,” I breathed, still watching.

“Have the tea,” he repeated and turned away.

It was a lovely view. The clay was dripping down his arms and legs, leaving wet tracks that glimmered in the silvery light. I looked about. There was the small table with a tea tray, my moon blade waiting beside it. The candle had burnt away, as had the ones in the sconces on the walls. In their places, white orbs glowed, like so many miniature moons. They bleached the colours from things.

“Right,” I murmured and poured the steaming liquid from the pot. Even in the wan light, I could see the tea was red. It smelled like roses.

*** 

“For you,” he said, crouching before me and holding out his hands.

They were full of gold bands, one so large it hung over his wrist. I ducked my head and saw that its circle wasn’t complete.

“For me?” 

He raised an eyebrow. He does hate to repeat himself, although he’s done it for me.

“Why?”

His lips quirked up at one side. “Better,” he said.

But it wasn’t an answer. I reached out with a finger and touched the top of the pile. It was warm.

I glanced at him.

He was watching my face, eyes alight, expectant.

“Which one?” I asked, looking down at the gold and hoping I wouldn’t pick the wrong one. 

_Maybe it’s a test._

I hope not. 

“All of them.” 

“What?”

“Everything.” He extended his cupped hands further, elbows balanced on his knees. “Put them on.”

I checked his face again. There was a smudge of clay across his cheek bone. It made his eyes brighter. I reached out and tried to wipe it away. Instead, it smeared.

“Later,” he said. “Try them. Choose the fingers.” He moved his own slightly and the metal tinkled.

I glanced down. One of the rings had a pale, round stone set between pairs of heart-shaped leaves. Morning glories have leaves like that. I flushed. The stone had surely come from the clay. I took it up first.

Sherlock smiled at that.

_Right choice._

It would seem.

I considered my fingers. Where should it go?

_Left forefinger. To point with._

I slipped it on. The stone caught the lambent light and appeared to hold it. I moved to touch Sherlock’s hand with the tip of my finger. Static electricity snapped between us before I reached his skin.

“Is that right?” I asked.

“How does it feel?”

“Amazing.” A faint tingling was travelling up my arm. It was gone before it reached my shoulder.

“Choose another.”

There was a band of openwork gold in the shape of thistle flowers and leaves. With more assurance, I slid it onto the ring finger of my left hand. I smiled and held it out. It felt good there.

“Go on,” he urged.

I picked quickly after that, each finger seeming to find its ring without much intercession on my part. I’d never been much for wearing rings, although every time I had they’d meant something – except the time I played Mercutio in school and had worn two for my part. Well, maybe even then. I’d had something of a crush on the classmates playing Romeo and Juliet; they had only had eyes for each other. Great casting for the play. Difficult rehearsals for me.

I held out both hands, every finger be-ringed, even the thumbs. I moved them as though I was plucking my harp. The rings glittered and my fingers felt stronger with them on. I’d certainly do more damage with a right hook with them there.

Sherlock dropped the remaining gold on the cushion next to me. “I’ll help you with the rest,” he said, settling on the floor and lifting up a narrow braid of gold and silver. He grasped each side and pulled. The capped ends opened.

I held out my left arm. 

He slipped it over my wrist and pushed the ends together. They felt warm where they joined.

I offered my right hand and an open cuff scored with the outlines of intricate knots slipped over my wrist. Its pattern was the same as the designs on my harp. 

I swivelled my wrist to and fro. “You made these while I was asleep?”

Sherlock’s hands dropped to his lap, his gaze dropping with them. “I’ve been working on the rings for a few months. You were going to need them at some point.” He picked up an odd-sized band from the cushion, began rolling it between his fingers. “I started on the others as soon as the plan for this ball was visited on us. You’ll…”

I laid my hand on his arm. “Special kit. I get it.” 

_Are you sure?_

Not completely.

I picked up the largest circlet. As I held it up to the light, it fell open; the coiled tail of a serpent unlatching from the red enamelled tongue protruding from the serpent’s gaping jaws. Red-clawed forelegs were drawn up close to the head. Scales were etched into the narrow body. Folded wings thickened the middle portion of the body, each plume delineated with precision. It was a three-dimensional version of the creature on my harp. It looked ready to take flight.

“You didn’t have time to make this,” I said, squinting at the red jewels embedded either side of the golden head.

“No. It’s one of mine. See how it fits.”

I put it round my neck, unfastened, and looked over at him. In the low light, his pallor had taken on a blue cast. I had never seen him wear any metal that wasn’t silvery. The first dagger he’d given me was silver. It needed polishing every new moon.

“I changed it to gold for you.”

I didn’t ask how he knew what I was thinking. He does it so often, I’ve become inured.

“Changed it?” I hate when I echo what he says.

_He hates it._

Yeah, I know.

“Gold suits the sunlight in you,” he said, “the fire.”

He was looking at the gold in his hand again, fidgeting with it. I couldn’t see his eyes.

“How could you change it?”

“The same way I changed the clay into gold to finish your bands,” he said, not looking up.

“Transmutation? The alchemist’s dream?”

He smiled then, meeting my eyes without raising his head. I've always thought it a mischievous look. “I am a chemist after all.” 

“Scientists need research facilities’ worth of equipment to change a few molecules into gold; you just changed a bowlful of it.”

He sat up straighter. “That was only the last batch. You’ve been asleep for a while.”

I considered the dim light from the glowing orbs, glanced over my shoulder at the faint glow from the few stones left scattered in the hearth and back at Sherlock. He’d said he was hot a few moments before. “But the heat necessary for such a process would incinerate…” My eyes rose to the ceiling. “This whole house and you and me and everyone else in it.”

His hand darted out, fingertips stroking over the flints in the floor. “She’s old and strong, this house; not easy at all to burn her nor those she shelters.”

It set me back. I had an urge to apologise. “I meant no offense,” I declared and not being sure where to direct my words, I turned my head about as I spoke.

There was a sharp rap on the floor, a second and several more. I stared at the bench and saw another stone fall from the lower part of the ledge and clack against the flint. 

“You are a fortunate man, John Watson,” Sherlock said, scooping up a few of the fallen rocks and dropping them into my palm.

They felt very good in my hand.

I looked at Sherlock. His attention had shifted again to the band in his hand. He had it suspended from his thumb.

“So how?”

“It will take years more before my explanation would truly make sense to you, so suffice it to say that they waste a vast amounts of energy because they don’t know how to apply it…nor where.”

Obviously, Sherlock did.

I touched the torc around my neck. It seemed to settle into place, the horns at the side of its face pricking lightly against my skin. “It’s not fairy gold, is it?”

Several expressions warred for supremacy on Sherlock’s face. “Its atomic structure is perfect, every proton, neutron and electron orbiting in its proper place unless acted upon by some very powerful external force that very few can wield.” He rolled his shoulders back. “Very, very few.”

The contrast often leaves me speechless. The erudite scientist and the adept…what? Sorcerer? Alchemist? Vampire? 

_You the sorcerer’s apprentice, then?_

I rubbed my free hand across my face. The backs of the rings were hard, cool and very real against my skin. I peeked between my fingers. The cloud was still drizzling on him, a warm rain I supposed because he didn’t appear chilled. His lips were drawn in. I hadn’t meant to offend him. 

My brilliant, proud, supernatural being. 

_Yours, is he?_

Yes. 

My hand fell into my lap and I gazed at every beautiful, indignant part of him I could see. 

And I’m going to try my worst to keep it so.

He raised an eyebrow at me. His expression becoming more curious than outraged.

I leaned forward and placed a hand on his knee. The tingle went up my arm, fading out below my ear. I didn’t let it sidetrack me.

“The little I thought I knew, I have to unlearn,” I said. “I didn’t mean to give offense.”

His shoulders relaxed. “Yes, well, fairy gold is an illusion, a glamour. It has its uses, of course, but that’s not what these are.”

I realised then that I’d asked him if his gifts were tat. 

_Well done, Watson._

“I…I’m not trying to excuse my ignorance here mind…I thought maybe they were only needed for tonight.”

He covered my hand with his; the tingling reached the crown of my head. I held steady. “A glamour wouldn’t work on these. They require the real thing.” His gaze lowered to my neck. “Some volume was lost in transmuting the silver into gold. He’s a slenderer, denser dragon now.”

The torc slithered over my collarbone. My hand flew up to it. There was a small hiss. “Ah. So what does this do?”

“He’ll bite anything that tries to bite you.”

“Right. Good. That’s good. But I thought we were sticking with dancing.”

“It would be a terrible breach of etiquette to bite a member of one’s host’s household and I doubt anyone would be so crude…” Sherlock said.

“But you don’t entirely rule it out.”

“No.”

“Civilised on the surface, treacherous underneath,” I said. “A familiar arrangement.”

Sherlock nodded. “Much as I loathe these gatherings, it might have been prudent to volunteer to host another one sooner. I’ve never attended any elsewhere and I was nineteen the last time we had one here.”

_There’s an image._

Yeah.

My hand found its way back to his knee. The tingling wasn’t as strong as before and I stroked the skin, feeling an odd regret as the sensation ebbed away. In his hand, the last gold band remained, still unoffered, the chains affixed to it chiming faintly as he flipped it around his fingers.

“What’s that one, then?”

“It’s optional,” he said.

I edged closer, my hand sliding onto his thigh.

Like the knives, it caught the light, which was surprising considering how dim they were and how small the band.

“You wouldn’t have made it without a reason.”

He looked up from beneath his brows at that.

“I do things out of curiosity sometimes,” he said.

I curved my hand onto his inner thigh. The skin is nearly hairless there and incredibly soft. “Yes, but not now, with this…this thing looming over us.”

“It’s also dangerous,” he added, leaning back on one hand. It let more of what light there was reach the bangle as he twirled it between his fingers. The delicate chiming of gold against gold increased. Its little chains whirled outwards from one rim of the cuff. There were markings around the outside. I couldn’t see what they were.

“You know that’ll appeal to me,” I said, stretching my legs and slipping off the cushion so I could get closer.

“Yes,” he said.

I realised it had a hinge and a clasp, two semi-circles joined together. I gestured with my hand, the one with the stones in it. My other kneaded high up Sherlock’s thigh.

Sherlock stopped his spinning, looked intently at the opalescent rocks on my palm and then at my face.

“That’s interesting,” he said and I saw that the small chains were horizontal to the floor, like so many compass needles pointing north. He moved his hand above mine and the chains fell straight down.

“What does that mean?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said and withdrew his hand. The little chains flailed in the air.

“It wants the stones back.”

“What?”

“The gold was clay, the stones came from the clay and now the clay wants them back,” I said.

“No!” Sherlock exclaimed. “Gifts are not taken back!”

_Start composing your next apology, Watson._

I withdrew my hand and held it palm up. “Then, she wants me to accept your offer.”

“I haven’t made an offer.”

“Make one and I’ll accept. If…she’d never want to take the stones back then she wants me to take the gold.”

Sherlock appeared to consider. “There’s a danger in it,” he said, scanning me from my head, past my open hands open and downwards. He paused at my naval. I looked down as well and almost laughed. 

My new state appeared to be fairly permanently at attention. A quip was forming on my tongue, when I realised what the band was meant to encompass. My hands dropped.

_You can be very slow sometimes._

“Tell me about the danger, Sherlock,” I said and if I was instilling as much charm into the words as I could, it wasn’t a duplicitous act, but an instinctive one.

His brows rose a little at my boldness, but he didn’t raise his head. “If the recipient of such a gift accepts to wear it, he cannot remove it alone; giver and receiver must unlock it together.”

“In harmony,” I said rather facilely.

 _He’s not telling you everything._

Such as that my melodic skills aren’t all I thought they were? Opening and unlocking, after all, had been among the first tunes I had learnt and I fancied I used them rather well.

He lifted his eyes to mine. “It’s locked. Try opening it.”

I didn’t turn my eyes away and instead of the barely audible hum that I’d come to use, I sang it. I’ve played the notes, whistled them, hummed them both loudly and quietly, but I have never given them full-throated voice. 

There was a soft, tearing sound and the band split open in Sherlock’s hand. 

My voice lowered to a croon as the gap widened. When two semi-circles lay side-by-side, connected by some supple hinge, a ripple ran through the metal.

I peered at the transformation, my voice an undulating hum. The semi-circles stretched out, arched up and took flight. It was a short glide from Sherlock’s hand to mine, the landing in my upturned palm accompanied by a light clink as the metal met the stones.

Sherlock leaned close, his curls brushing my forehead as we watched the metal melt like spring snow. Next to my skin, warmth spread, akin to the feel of a hot mug of tea on a blustery morning. The outlines of the stones under the softening gold grew less distinct until they had dissolved altogether. The heat increased. 

I held my hand steady and thought of bonfires roaring towards November skies, flames darting between orange, glowing branches spewing sparks as they cracked and surrendered, beckoning me to join them in the white gold heart of the blaze. I had always wanted to step forwards, but had always stepped back, destined to watch from a safer distance as autumn air cooled my scorched cheeks and leeched the warmth from my bones. 

My humming was barely more than an articulated sigh. I touched my forehead to Sherlock’s and watched the molten gold crystallise and divide into two bands. My palm cooled. My humming ceased.

“You weren’t expecting that I accept it,” I finally said.

Sherlock cradled my hand in both of his. “I thought there was a chance you might, but that you would take it and fashion a telluride from it? No,” he breathed, tilting my hand a little to the left and then to the right, “that I never expected, but you, John, are a continual surprise.”

_I hope you can keep that up, Watson._

Me, too, except I don’t know how it happened.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“What do _you_ feel it means?” he replied, his thumbs stroking the inside of my wrist, seemingly absentmindedly, as he continued to peer at the two circlets.

“We should face this danger together and that whatever protection you had created for me – you need it, too.”

“We’ve been preparing to face it together,” he said.

It was distracting how he was stroking my arm. My pulse beat more strongly there as though the blood was trying to reach him. 

“I think…you’ve been preparing me to protect myself, not to help protect you,” I said and the danger connected to wearing the band became clear. “There’s a small chance you won’t be able to defend yourself and I’d be a celibate man for the rest of my life because you wouldn’t be around to help me unlock the band.”

Sherlock nodded. He was tracing the veins from my wrist to the inside of my elbow.

“You’ve been discarding strategies that posed too great a risk to me,” I continued. “You think someone might break the rules and attack before we can dance the dance that could foil them all.”

Sherlock looked up. “It comes in flashes, your insight. Like an eye that is recovering from an injury that swelled it shut.” He frowned. “Your protective spells are mainly unconscious. You don’t know how you’ve done them and you don’t know how to undo them. Even I haven’t seen past most of them.”

“At least you saw that I wanted you,” I said.

He smiled a little at that.

“But not how much,” I added and raised my forearm to his mouth. “Take more. It strengthens you. I can see that.”

“You can see or you can feel it?” he asked.

“I can see it as your doctor and I can feel it as-”

I hesitated to name myself his lover; it sounded so bold to claim the title, despite all we had done…

“My beloved,” he finished, interrupting my equivocations.

“…your lover,” I said at nearly the same time.

He smiled a little more at that. “Then, you must open yourself for me…” He added a word I could barely hear, in a language I didn’t know, but its sound pleased me nonetheless.

I took the moon blade from the table and pressed the tip over the flesh beneath which the cephalic and basilica veins joined. A large drop welled from the tiny incision, and with one hand at my elbow and the other cupped below the hand that held our bands, he lifted my arm and drank.

And I watched until I couldn’t resist the urge to close my eyes anymore.

The flames were orange and red; they licked and flickered along my veins, too quick to burn, teasing and bright. 

He pulled away too soon. 

I opened my eyes and saw his lips, plump and red. He glanced at me from half opened eyes and bent down…

Drink, drink.

…for a kiss.

The wound closed. He set my arm back on my thigh.

“I could taste it,” he said.

I frowned.

“Your song,” he said. “It’s still in your blood, hot and bright.”

He nipped at his wrist and held it out.

“For balance,” he said and I heard his voice more than the words as the fragrance hit me.

I seized his arm, no drop to waste. His blood was warmer this time and it tasted…of course, it tasted, like roses. In the sun.

I felt him try to pull his arm away. I gripped him more tightly.

“No more now…”

I stopped, appalled that I had overdone, weakened him.

He shook his head. “It will make you drunk.” He smiled at me then and I smiled back, both of us bloodied.

I licked my lips, shivered at the last effects and exhaled slowly. “And now,” I began, indicating my open hand with a glance.

He tapped each of the bands with a fingertip. “We both take the risk?”

“Yes.”

“It’s thirteen hours ‘til dawn,” he pointed out.

I considered his priapic state and stroked a hand over the insistent evidence of mine. “Something to take the edge off?”

He shrugged. “I will not say no, but the effect will be short-lived as there are things we must each do after the bands are on to seal the charm.”

“One step at a time,” I said, leaning forward to kiss my blood off his lips.

*** 

Time had passed, although there were no clocks, no ray of sun or moon to provide a clue as to how much. Sherlock was beside me, the rise and fall of his ribs a reassuring rhythm beneath my arm. I smiled to myself. I had finally lulled him to sleep.

_As far as you know, he hasn’t slept in days._

My momentary smugness disappeared. I opened an eye. The faint glow of the moon blade on the table and the bands on the floor gave hints at his posture as his skin reflected back their light. One arm was above his head, the other I felt stretched out behind my neck. His legs were splayed, one half on the floor, the other crooked over my thighs. My smugness returned, enhanced by relief at how much his anxiety appeared to have abated.

_Preparations complete?_

I rubbed my cheek against his arm, felt the bristles there. Not quite. Maybe we could have a long steam in the hammam. Our muscles could use it and a good wash seemed in order. Best to be refreshed and relaxed before dancing on our enemies’ graves.

_Where did that come from?_

I don’t know.

The image was strong.

The ballroom resplendent with the flames of hundreds of candles reflected endlessly in the mirrors and night-dark glass of the long walls. Music floated down from the gallery: harp and violin and pipe. Our music. 

I felt light-headed with it. I held Sherlock tighter.

The vision persisted. 

Beneath the music, voices murmured, but I could not see who possessed them. They swirled between us in a blur of lustrous fabrics, but when the steps brought you and I face to face and our hands touched, I neither heard nor saw even that much of them. I saw you, tall and regal as the night sky, your black garments studded with constellations of crystal, slashed to reveal cloth as radiant as the moon, and I danced for you. 

And when I danced alone, I felt clay and chalk, rock and earth through my soft shoes, instead of the parquet I knew was there. Tambours sounded and I danced to their rhythm, over swords, crossed and gleaming, and the heads of my rivals bowed lower each time I touched the ground with toe or heel. I saw their grasping hands fall to their sides, their backs hunch and their robes hang like limp rags. Over their stooped shoulders, I saw your eyes upon me and when you smiled I stomped the earth with my whole foot and those that would have you in my stead, crumpled to dust and blew away.

You stepped over the places where they had been and offered me your hand. I clasped it to my chest and we danced as the harp and the violin sang and beneath our feet the rocks cracked and the clay and the chalk and the earth bloomed. 

It took a while to catch my breath. When I could lift my head, I kissed Sherlock’s cheek. “Have we slept a hundred years?” I whispered.

He turned his head and looked at me, through me. “You are ready now.”

“I’m not even sure I’m awake,” I said, running my hand over a dry patch on my belly. “Time for a trip to the hammam to clear the brain and loosen the limbs?”

He shook his head against the cushion. “Time isn’t the issue. What’s on our skin needs to stay there.”

I rubbed my hand over my jaw. “You sure about that?”

His eyes crinkled. “A shampoo, a shave, clean teeth…” He brushed down his chest. “Maybe a damp flannel gently applied here and there.”

I sighed in relief.

“Only a bit,” he emphasised, reaching over his head and scooping up both bands. “Enough so we don’t chafe wearing these, no more.”

“So, this is how we’re deterring unwanted suitors?”

He laughed. “I’ve distilled an excellent perfume.” The apparatus on the ledge burbled as if it had been waiting for a cue. “And I’m afraid their intent has little to do with whether we are sweet or pungent.”

“I cede to your superior knowledge,” I said, thinking that he could smell like a polecat and it would barely dim his allure.

His grinned up at me. “Of course, you do.”

I shook my head. I could still hear the music playing.

“And you’re going to like what we need to do once the bands are on,” he added, lifting his leg off me and sitting up. “At first, anyway.”

*** 

“Do they all have crowns?” I whispered as I looked down from the gallery. “I feel underdressed.”

We had paused, three-quarters of the way up the spiral staircase leading to the music room gallery, and looked out through a grating in the wall into the fencing…the ball room. The hall of my vision lay before us.

A couple steps below me on the stairs, Sherlock stood close, his chest firm against my back. I could feel him breathing. He touched my hair. “Yours is the mightier crown,” he murmured. I might have suspected a jest, but for the gravitas in his voice. It made me stand straighter. I reached up and brushed the leaves of the gold branches laden with acorns he had wound about my head. 

I scrutinised the glittering throng and spotted a few other guests without jewels encircling their brows. A tall, ominous figure was skirting the edge of the room in sable raiment and what looked like a cloth cap from which several long, thin black feathers pointed downwards. I decided to keep an eye on him. He would be easy enough to spot. 

A loud guffaw drew my gaze to a short fellow, holding forth at the centre of an attentive circle of listeners, with a multi-coloured hat that jingled as he moved his head.

_Is that a jester?_

He seems too fond of his own jests to be a real one.

He turned then and looked up at the grating from which we peered and I shivered.

“That’s one of them,” Sherlock said, looking over my shoulder.

“The bantam?” I asked and his headdress took on more of the appearance of a coxcomb even as I stared.

“They are taking their seats,” Sherlock said. “We will be expected shortly.”

I turned my attention from the raucous cock reluctantly. Small or not, it seemed better to keep him in view. 

A cursory sweep of the room to where Sherlock was pointing, showed a number of scabbards gleaming as brightly as the crowns. I felt for my daggers and my blade and wondered whether I could assume all the other guests had similar weapons concealed against their silk-stockinged thighs or inside their billowing sleeves. 

 

I sighted along the line of Sherlock’s forefinger. Halfway down the long wall of windows, a shapely woman in silver robes was settling into one of a pair of high gilded chairs situated on a small platform connecting two window seats. Her fair hair was swept up and held by a diadem of gems that scattered light as she tilted her head upwards. Her gloved hand was held aloft by a tall, snowy-haired man whose sumptuous cloak glimmered darkly as he released her hand with a kiss. Their elegance would have made them stand out even without the raised platform.

“Them?” I asked, hoping neither was one of my rivals.

“My parents,” Sherlock grumbled and nudged me forward. “They are not patient.”

An odd mixture of relief and trepidation overtook me. “A family trait,” I whispered back and climbed the last few steps to ease open the narrow door at the top. When we slid aside the middle panel that connected the music room and ballroom galleries, a murmur ran through the crowd below us. We walked rapidly along the ballroom gallery and disappeared into the door on the other side that led down to the ballroom. “Was I imagining that?” I asked as we descended.

“No,” Sherlock replied dryly. “I have succeeded in avoiding these gatherings for years and become something of a curiosity as a consequence. Unfortunately, I cannot avoid attending when my parents host one here.” He rested a hand on my shoulder as I reached the bottom. “Wait a moment.”

“I thought we were in a hurry?”

“Give the musicians a chance to settle.” 

The sound of chairs scraping over wood echoed down the stairwell and I realised that they had probably been waiting for us to cross the gallery before they mounted the stairs. I had not seen anyone in the music room, but they could have been in the passage that ran parallel to the music room. I still had never gone down it, no matter how invitingly the door to it always seemed to be ajar when I passed.

There was a brief tuning of instruments and then the musicians began to play.

“Go,” Sherlock urged. 

“What? We needed music for our entrance?” I joked, but Sherlock just prodded me and I opened the door.

After a couple minutes in the gloom of the stairwell, I was dazzled. The colours were more vivid and the room brighter than I thought possible with candlelight.

_Ever seen this many candles lit before?_

Fair enough.

The toe of Sherlock’s shoe bumped my heel and I stepped forward. If his parents were waiting, I supposed that was our first destination. I walked in that direction and hoped our perfumes were as efficacious as Sherlock claimed. 

He, at any rate, smelled like a garden in full flower.

Along with the music, which sounded eerily like wind through bare branches, the chatter around us rose like a chorus of crickets and I felt a strange conflict between the satin and mirrors I saw and the perceptions of my other senses. The spring beneath my feet had the feel of a carpet of needles on a forest floor rather than the parquet of a ballroom and the scent of the climbing roses from our balcony seemed to be all I could smell.

I stopped in front of the raised platform and looked up at the seated figures there. Closer now, I could see Sherlock in both their faces, but they seemed far too young to be his parents despite their white hair. The man spoke. 

Oh, god! 

I saw his lips move, but the words refused to make sense. They were Sherlock’s lips and had no right to be on this other person, especially considering what I had so recently watched them doing. I forced myself to smile politely, because it seemed the words might have required at least that. If they had required a reply, I couldn’t have attempted it. I heard Sherlock introduce me and my name sounded odd, as though it had extra syllables. 

His mother…surely she couldn’t be…held out her hand.

I took a step up onto the platform, bent over her fingers and managed not to stumble nor actually touch her glove with my lips. I could feel the heat in my cheeks when I straightened up again. She smiled at me and I saw a bluer variation of Sherlock’s eyes. I wondered if I could hum the spell to hide myself in a mist. 

_Don’t think it would deceive eyes like hers._

Probably not.

“You’ll do well,” she said and slipped her hand away from mine.

I realised that I had clasped it and thought I might go up in flame.

 _Not a good idea with all this lace and stuff about._

“Yes, I believe he will,” said the man. 

_His father, fool._

Yes.

I turned towards him, some wild grimace no doubt on my face. He nodded genially at me and I retreated without falling down the step and felt very grateful for that.

_Not the usual ‘meeting the parents’._

No. Not that I’ve done much of that.

Sherlock walked past me, kissed both his parents’ hands in a demonstration of how it should be gracefully done, and exchanged some quiet words that I could not hear, although I felt sure they were in a language I had not yet learned. 

_But you will._

Yes, I probably should.

In a moment, Sherlock was back beside me, his hand on my arm guiding me away. “And now,” he said, so softly I doubted I could be hearing him over the symphony of crickets and fiddles that was possibly in my head, “we must dance for the rest of the evening. Ready to begin?”

We were in the middle of the room when I next noted my surroundings, and I realised there was a space opening as the crowd moved back in silence. The music, too, had stopped. I thought the air might have left with it. I looked at Sherlock, solemn and pale, and squared my shoulders, dipping my chin so infinitesimally, only Sherlock could possibly have detected it. 

I might have been assenting to a dash behind enemy lines or a charge up a bramble-filled hill in the altogether. 

I knew where the first image came from and hoped the second hadn’t occurred sometime when I had been too drunk to remember…until now.

The music resumed. The sound of the grand harp, with the barest accompaniment from a flute, rained down on the room and I hoped it was Mrs Hudson playing and that somehow she was watching out for us, even if she had been sort of experimenting on me.

Sherlock bowed and I bowed back. He held out his hand and we began.

*** 

Once more, the music paused. I had managed to remember the figures Sherlock had taught me with the care of an armourer showing how a new gun should be assembled. He hadn’t explained explicitly how it might be, but I had been sure a misstep would mean far more than a trodden toe and had applied myself accordingly. 

_You apply yourself to everything he asks you to do._

Yes, well.

The diagram for the dance had traced the pattern of a rose and as we danced the scent of roses had intensified. At its conclusion, we bowed to one another. All around us others did the same. I had not noticed them dancing at all. 

There was a suggestion of a smile on Sherlock’s lips and I was enjoying the sense of having acquitted myself adequately when at his elbow appeared a man wearing one of the crowns I had seen from the stairs. It was heavy gold ringed with round rubies and sapphires – or red and blue glass. He was of my height and holding a scarlet half mask over his face. Sherlock’s smile faded quite away.

_Battle stations._

I studied this lank-haired apparition whose pale lips twitched restlessly beneath a sparse moustache and above an even sparser goatee. Through the mask’s eyes, I glimpsed his, gleaming and dark, wild and cold. 

I heard a slithering.

A full blue and gold robe didn’t hide his serpentine sinuousness. 

“I had heard you’d found a green one,” he drawled at Sherlock with a familiarity that brought my hand to the hilt of my dagger. “But I could hardly believe it. They are so terribly rare.” He turned then to look at me much as one might assess a classic car or a racehorse, I supposed.

I stared steadily back. The moon blade grew icy against my chest. I forbore to touch it. His eyes were too quick.

The leaves about my head rustled.

His eyes widened, the candlelight dancing in them, then the lids drooped and he scanned me from top to bottom and back. “And a lively one, at that. Oh, yes. A very lively one, I’d warrant.” He turned to Sherlock. “Hard to keep the lively ones satisfied, I’ve read.” His glance flickered back to me for an instant. “But I’ve researched a lot on how it might be managed. I don’t suppose you’d like to share your little treasure.” He laid his hand on Sherlock’s arm. “Give yourself a little rest.”

The ‘little’ might have rankled if he hadn’t been so much of a size with me, but the way he stroked down Sherlock’s sleeve as he finished his little speech, made me want to break his little be-ringed fingers – one by one.

I glared at him instead and he laughed. 

“Would you like to dance, Doctor Watson? Looks like Sherlock here’s trained you up well.” He leaned towards me and lowered his voice. “I’ve always loved watching Sherlock dance.”

My temperature went up, the urge to lay hands on him pulling at my bones. I clenched my fists at my side.

He leaned closer still. “But watching him with a well-trained partner would be even more delicious. What all has he taught you, little one?”

_Such an old trick. Don’t give anything away, Watson._

My temperature plummeted, my hands relaxed and I grew very calm. I even smiled.

He leaned back.

“Very good.” He looked up at Sherlock. “You’ve done very well,” he repeated, swinging the hand holding his mask to the side and waving it up and down as though marking the metre of what he said.

I considered his pallid, ordinary face and the expressions he exaggerated nearly to parody. Usually, that was his mask, I decided. But the hunger on his face when he looked at Sherlock was raw and genuine and he would have done better to continue to disguise it. Even if it would be hard without a velvet mask.

I would know.

“Doctor Watson has no free dances this evening,” Sherlock said serenely, but his face was too still for serenity.

“Oh, doesn't he now?” the starving man said in a sing-song voice.

I heard a hiss and a howl in it and tried to identify the melody. I failed. It was doing something though, I was sure, and it wasn’t directed at me.

“Such a pity.” He held his mask up again and turned away. The crowd parted before him. 

“I’ll ask again after supper,” he called over his shoulder.

The crowd closed behind him. “You might feel differently by then.” The words floated to us over the heads of the throng. If he said more, it was lost as the musicians began again to play. 

As unpleasant as his presence had been, I didn’t like losing sight of him either. 

Sherlock held out his hand.

“Cock No. 2?” I asked, aiming for a little levity. I turned to face him.

“No. 2,” he repeated without a smile. "No, No. 3." 

I gripped his hand tightly at that and let him swirl me away.

***


	4. Glazed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes dancing can be deadly.
> 
>  **Excerpt:** “Serious business, names. Not to be invoked lightly nor given away casually.” He’d gone back to watching in the glass over my head.
> 
> “So, no one but your parents knows who I am?”
> 
> “Oh, they all know who you are, John. That’s why they’d like to know your names.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much happened at the ball, that it seemed best to turn _Glazed_ into two chapters. I hope you enjoy what transpires before supper.

The music poured from the gallery. 

We turned and swayed to its commands, in circles or in lines – a bow, a glance, an offered hand – my partners might change while the music played, but, at the very least, I began and ended each dance with Sherlock. 

The hands of the clock on the gallery rail turned with us, forwards and back. 

The dances became more complex, our feet tracing patterns within patterns. I began to see them on the floor, like the trails of snails across a garden path glimmering in the candlelight. Dance followed dance and our traces grew more distinct, tinted with colours that blended where our footsteps crossed; bisecting the pale trails of others like so much paint on a tarmac.

I felt more assured, kept time with more ease, arriving where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there. Sherlock seemed pleased. My tension ebbed; the steps were on my skin, after all – in my blood. I started to see the lines ahead of me, beckoning. I hesitated to follow. Alert to deceit, I compared them first to the patterns I had memorised. I didn’t know what others might be able to make me see. 

When the musicians rested, the designs faded away.

We would drink then from his flask and I would catch my breath while Sherlock studied the other dancers in the mirrors and smiled distantly to the greetings that were bestowed on him and after brief glances of curiosity, on me.

In a moment alone, I had asked why none were introduced.

He had lowered his eyes for a moment to mine. “Serious business, names. Not to be invoked lightly nor given away casually.” He’d gone back to watching in the glass over my head.

“So, no one but your parents knows who I am?”

“Oh, they all know who you are, John. That’s why they’d like to know your names.”

That had silenced me and made me think of my middle name. Not Hamish, although I avoid using that as much as I can anyway because I’ve never liked it, but the other one, the one my nan used to call me when she sang me to sleep or looked after me when I was sick. Come to think of it, she never said it outside, except once, when I was about to cross the lane that curved round the side and front of the house to retrieve a ball. I had stopped, almost mid-step, so surprised was I to hear her say it, just as a car crested the hill and roared past in a fog of exhaust, making my clothes flap about me. It had flattened my ball. I was furious about that and had turned to express my outrage to my nan, but she was at the door of the cottage, beckoning to me. The front garden was large, full of shrubs and flowerbeds; she would have needed to shout for me to have heard her so clearly from where she was, but she hadn’t shouted. She’d said my name quietly and firmly just by my ear. It had puzzled me, but somehow, she had got me a new ball by teatime and I had forgotten all about it. Until now.

“We must talk about her sometime,” Sherlock said softly. “Sometime when we are not being interrupted,” he continued, raising his voice slightly and looking away from me.

I turned and observed the ominous, sable-clad figure gliding towards us. I could see now that his cloak was trimmed with black feathers as well as his cap. There was not a hint of colour on him, but his mask, which was hooked onto the belt at his hip was silver as were the numerous rings on his fingers.

He stopped only a step away at a point equidistant between Sherlock and me, regarded me for several seconds, then focussed on Sherlock. They stood, eyes locked on one another for half a minute or more and judging from the slight movements of their eyebrows, gave the impression that they were having a conversation without uttering a word.

Finally, Sherlock huffed. “John,” he said, very quietly. “I have the dubious honour of presenting to you my _older_ brother, Mycroft.”

“His _wiser_ brother, he should, more properly, say,” the man, this Mycroft, said, and extended his hand. It was palm up, so it didn’t seem he intended a handshake. 

I could see the glint of heavy silver about his wrist as he held it there. I glanced at Sherlock. 

The folds of his cloak shifted and his curls moved as though a breeze were ruffling them. He’d narrowed his eyes at his brother.

I felt it strange that Sherlock should have one. He seemed too singular to have such a close relation. Even his possessing parents had been a surprise, as if I’d thought he’d been formed in a cloud by lightning and drifted to earth in an evening mist.

Mycroft tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, managing, due to his position, to direct the expression at both Sherlock and me.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes further and then turned to me and nodded.

I was surprised once more, but I extended my right hand, palm down. Mycroft held his outstretched hand beneath mine, then brought his other up and passed it over mine without touching me. 

My left hand had not trembled in over a year, but I clenched it by my side in case he was checking for any sign of vulnerability. I sincerely hoped that he couldn’t do anything close to what Sherlock could with regard to my thoughts, and yet, looking at his eyes, I thought that he might be able to. The notion wasn’t pleasing.

He continued his airy handclasp for a minute more before withdrawing his hands. “You don’t seem very afraid,” he remarked.

“You don’t seem very frightening,” I replied.

He chuckled.

Sherlock snorted.

_Good tactic. Keep ‘em laughing._

Shut the fuck up.

I know how to bluff, but I wasn’t. He didn’t frighten me. If he was someone I had to get through to keep Sherlock, I would get through him…or die trying. It was a calming thought. I pressed my lips together and regarded this brother with an assessing look of my own. The silver sheath of the rapier visible at his side was studded with dark stones; they gleamed like so many eyes. I scanned his flowing garments – so much room for other blades. Something silver moved at his neck and I saw a serpent’s head, like my own, peep above his ruffled collar. I felt a movement at my throat and wondered how that would work in an encounter.

_Whoa, Watson. A good shag’s important, but…_

Shut the bloody fuck up. You are not helping here.

 _Why him though? Why not the parents? Shouldn’t they be the ones to make sure you’re intending the honourable thing by their offspring?_

Unless…

I looked to Sherlock. His eyes were working on boring a hole in the side of Mycroft’s head and his curls remained restless. As pissed off as he appeared to be, and he didn’t seem to be making any effort to hide it, he looked so fiercely beautiful that anyone might want him.

_Anyone._

I winced at the pressure of the moon gold band.

_Focus, Watson._

I glanced back at Mycroft. An eyebrow went up slightly.

Or maybe…

_…he’s after your arse._

That’d be some nasty sibling rivalry.

_Or a test. To see if you can be wooed away with his older-wiser brother allure thing._

That’s a thing?

_It is if you’re a materialist._

Ah.

“Your hand, Doctor Watson.”

I scowled and looked back at Sherlock.

He nodded.

My right hand moved from my side and Sherlock’s brows lowered. I raised my left hand instead and he lifted his chin.

I held my hand out to Mycroft. It did not disappoint me and remained as steady as a rock.

Mycroft’s gaze went from my hand to my face as he worked one of the rings off his left ring finger. It had a thick silver band, serrated along one edge, and curving upwards to hold a dark, iridescent stone in a claw. He had another like it on the same finger and they both resembled the stones on his scabbard.

I glanced at Sherlock again. He had a twin, or, I should say, a triplet to it that I had not marked earlier.

He spread his fingers.

I did the same.

Holding the ring between his thumb and index finger, Mycroft slipped it onto my _digitus medicinalis_ where it fit into notches along the top of the gold ring that Sherlock had made for me and which I had chosen to put on that finger.

_Whole family’s unnerving._

Yeah.

The hum of conversation in the room resolved into scores of distinctly audible exchanges. My eyes opened wide.

Sherlock stepped closer. “You’ll learn how to regulate that.” 

He must have done something to turn down the volume for me then, because my head no longer rang with the noise. 

“You learn how to direct it, also,” Mycroft said.

_Could have given a little tutorial first._

Mm.

I turned towards two women across the room who were looking in our direction and whispering avidly.

“I wonder if they’ve exchanged _bands_ ,” the taller of the two said with a sweeping downwards gesture of her hand.

Her friend leaned closer. “I wonder if they’re wearing them now.”

My eyes were back to saucer-size and I turned away.

“You get used to that as well,” Mycroft remarked. “People will talk.”

“They do little else,” Sherlock said, with a flickering glance below my belt.

The band there got tighter.

_I think he might enjoy their knowing that it’s his._

You are not helping.

My balls were starting to ache.

Sherlock passed me his flask. “This will help.”

Mycroft rolled his eyes at Sherlock.

“Welcome to the side of the angels, Doctor Watson,” he said, delicately inclining his head towards me. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“With pleasure,” Sherlock replied, “something on the dark side of the moon must need your attention urgently.”

With one more roll of the eyes, Mycroft glided off. “Only something on the far side of the room, brother mine.”

“Thank you…I think,” I said to his back.

He raised a hand, possibly in acknowledgement, before he disappeared into the crowd.

“Are there angels here?” I asked, looking about.

“You’ll be able to judge for yourself eventually.”

“But you’re not one of them,” I checked, to be sure.

Sherlock laughed. “Decidedly not. 

I took a deep breath; the elixir had worked a rapid effect. Bringing my cloak forward a little, I attempted to discreetly adjust myself. 

Sherlock leaned closer. “I’ll help you with that later,” he said in his deepest register.

With a few syllables, he undid the elixir’s work.

“You aren’t helping,” I gasped.

_Seems to be a trend this evening._

“Drink some more,” Sherlock suggested, not looking at all repentant.

I heard giggles from the aforementioned ladies and considered what I might do to require Sherlock to have urgent need of his little bottle. It might have shown on my face.

“Dance with me,” Sherlock said, taking the flask from me and sipping from it before tucking it away.

I won’t deny a wave of gratification.

Above us, the flute piped a note. The violin and harp tuned their strings. 

We strolled to our places on the dance floor.

*** 

In the midst of one dance, I found myself across from a woman who moved like a cloud in a moonlit sky. It took me a moment to recognise Sherlock’s mother, although I’m not sure she recognised me. When her line of dancers swirled towards the windows, she glanced over her shoulder with a subtle and secretive smile. I looked about and found Sherlock’s father next to me, his raised hands turning with the rhythm and his eyes on the curves of his wife’s figure. I felt a blush spreading up from my throat. It was there for any to see: the heat from which Sherlock had been forged and the source of his grace.

The musicians played faster. Each line of dancers shifted, one several paces to the right, the other to the left and my partners changed.

The room grew stuffy. Some people had had the foresight to carry fans, and they fluttered among those resting and chatting like so many butterflies. 

The silk and linen closest to my skin began to cling. The scent of evergreens warmed by the sun and autumn leaves moistened by the rain followed me round the floor and each time I was close enough to Sherlock to smell his fragrance, I would close my eyes for an instant and see roses climbing bare oak branches, full of thorns and flowers that cared not for the season. Even there, I could see the pattern to follow as lines spread over the ground, round the trees - narrow paths of violets and bluebells and strawberries. My steps felt true.

I opened my eyes to look at the clock. It was earlier than when I had looked last.

_Or its tomorrow afternoon._

My legs aren’t sore enough for that and my feet don’t hurt at all. 

_Maybe they’re numb._

I wiggled my toes; they seemed in good order. I checked the windows. Our reflections danced against an inky background. I looked across at my partner. Her head was crowned with shiny, brown plaits woven with sprigs of acacia. Her robe matched the vibrant yellow of the flowers. 

“Molly?” She looked so different out of her lab coat.

She smiled. The tempo of the music changed. The outer circle of dancers skipped clockwise. 

Another dancer took her place; he jingled as he smirked. “Good evening, Doctor Watson.” 

_How does he know your name?_

It sounded sinister on his tongue. I shook my head and missed a step.

He laughed, open-mouthed and mocking. “Are you really a dancer, Doctor Watson?”

I missed another step.

His face creased in glee.

“Do you know what you are, Doctor Watson?” he managed to ask between peals of laughter, his face contorted by the effort. The colours of his cap were separated by rows of diamonds. They sparkled as he threw his head back, the bells at the tips of his cap jingling in accompaniment.

“Do you even know?” He flung his arms back in mirth.

The music changed tempo and the outer circle rotated. Those to either side of me turned to face inward. Half a beat late, I did, too.

My hands were clasped. Before I could see who he was, my new partner swung me around so that I took his place in the innermost circle. The music sped up and he rotated counter-clockwise away from me. When Sherlock looked back, his brow was furrowed. It cleared my head. I half-smiled. 

_Not quite ready for dancing with your eyes closed, Watson._

It had felt so peaceful, but, yeah. Eyes open. Got to see ‘em coming.

I checked the floor for the traces of our steps. Sherlock’s had turned barbed and silvery and were wrapped around some leech-like thing that squirmed not far from my feet. Its gaping jaws were ringed with needle-sharp teeth. It gurgled and disappeared with an odd jingling sound and a puff of smoke that stunk of formaldehyde. 

Seemingly oblivious to the struggle on the floor, the dancers to either side of me took my hands for a series of sliding steps clockwise. Grateful for the guidance of our linked hands, I moved with them, keeping a lookout for further annelids as I went.

*** 

The candles burned low.

Sherlock and I danced, one pair among a whirl of others. It was a relief each time music began that would allow us to dance thus, his very touch sustaining. I led us through a star pattern, reversing the steps I had trod earlier in the other role in the same dance. Eyes steadfastly open, my confidence had returned a dance or two after my encounter with the jester. Following the mirror image of a complex dance was a test of whether it was justified or not. I brought us through, but the demands of the pattern had been sufficient to preclude conversation. 

Although the jester’s path had not crossed mine again, his grating laughter reached me during pauses in the music. My steps had not faltered, but I was pleased to rest when the next interval arrived, lest fatigue make them do so. This time, Sherlock was willing to stop near the tables by the wall of mirrors where silver fountains of wine and mead were interspersed with tiered plates of dainties, platters of sliced meats and cheeses and wide bowls of fruit. 

While Sherlock studied the room in the mirrors, I filled a cup with the mead that was flowing from one of the small urns balanced on the shoulders of several naked bacchantes that decorated the silver fountain nearest to me on the table.

I had seen it before. The bare curves of its many figurines were being polished when Mrs Hudson had given me my first tour of the kitchens and cellars. It had reminded me of the shapes I sometimes glimpsed ranged round a tree in the centre of the fountain in the courtyard below my bedroom balcony. There was more variety of position in the wine fountain, however. Each wine bearer had at least two lovers expressing their ardour. I tilted my head to get a clearer view of exactly how three of the figures were intertwined. The sculptor had clearly had supple models.

_Or a vivid imagination._

I tasted the mead and hummed in appreciation.

“My formulation,” Sherlock said, eyes still locked on the mirrors.

“Not some ancient brew?” I took a bigger sip. Parts of my mouth tingled that I didn’t think I had ever felt before.

“Quite new,” Sherlock replied. “Well, from my childhood. I did most of my early experiments in the kitchens, before the lab was set up.”

“Were they all this successful?” I emptied the cup and held it up to catch more.

Sherlock drew in his lips before answering. “No,” he finally said. “Don’t ask Mrs Hudson about them unless you have lots of time to spare. I understand her grandmother wrote letters.”

I took another sip. “It’s so good it should be illegal.”

_What does that say about the legal system?_

Point.

He smiled. “Some of the ingredients are several centuries past their use-by dates, so it would be. Does that enhance your enjoyment of it?”

It was my turn to smile. I drank more. “No wonder the ballroom is so full. I’d come a long way just to taste this.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

A breath of cool air reached us. 

Sherlock turned and I turned with him as the windows were being opened by liveried servants I could not identify from where I stood. I knew who was directing them, however. Gesturing as though he were conducting an orchestra, Wiggins stood underneath the gallery sending subordinates here and there with silent signals. Glass doors were secured against the embrasures. Small wooden steps were drawn up to the window seats, the cushions rolled up and carried away. When the to-ing and fro-ing subsided, a view was revealed that fit nothing I had seen from pavement or roof or on any foray in the Manor’s grounds. 

That it wasn’t the buildings on the south side of Melcomb Street was no surprise, but neither was it the oak and evergreen forest under whose branches I had hunted with Sherlock. Instead, a broad terrace stretched from the thresholds of the French doors to a balustrade broken by what appeared to be a staircase down to a wide river whose waters reflected the radiance of a full moon. The far bank was indistinct, neither could I discern the outline of the grand trees I had come to know well. Only the modest foliage of low shrubs and plants blooming in urns softened the geometry of the view. The scent of their pale flowers wafted in with the cool air – hyacinth and lily and lilac.

I had no idea when it was nor why it was there. 

In twos and threes, other guests were turning to look, too, but the hubbub I expected to erupt did not materialise. In truth, their comments were subdued. Perhaps it was familiar to them.

_Perhaps something wicked this way comes._

I glanced at Sherlock. His gaze was fixed on the centre doors with an intensity I never saw when anything good was about to happen.

I set aside my cup and sought my dagger’s hilt.

The silhouette of a figure wielding a long oar glided into view, halting when he was perfectly framed in the opening in the balustrade. Another figure rose up from what must have been a barge, but was invisible from our vantage. He mounted the stairs, bare-headed, his garments a fall of pewter about his form. With measured steps, he crossed the terrace. 

I checked on Sherlock again. 

“I may have to add a new dance, John,” he said, his voice audible only because he stood so close to me.

My jaw clenched. My hands as well.

Sherlock gripped my shoulder. When he spoke, his words were clipped and low or they were in my head and he didn’t speak aloud at all. 

“Your part is simple, crucial, but simple. At first you kneel on one knee, a couple metres from me, clapping in time with the beat of the music. You watch me, keep your eyes on me. Can you do that, for me?”

_Of course, you can do that, Watson, you do it most of the time anyway. Well, not the clapping. I imagine you could do it kneeling, possibly whilst whistling._

Funny.

My alarm eased a little. I could manage what he’d described so far.

“Why?” I breathed.

“Drink,” Sherlock said, flask out and being tipped over my cup and then his own. 

I reclaimed my cup, drained it as directed. Enhanced mead consumed, I rephrased my question. “Can you tell me why?”

He had turned away from the room, but he shook his head only slightly and smiled. I saw no humour in his eyes. We could be observed no matter which way we turned.

Hardly moving my lips, I continued. “Are the steps to it inscribed on my skin?”

He picked a strawberry from a brimming bowl of fruit and offered it to me to bite. I was a little surprised, but, in this, too, I followed his lead and bit it in half.

“No,” he replied and popped the rest in his mouth.

“What comes after the kneeling?” I whispered, holding my empty cup near my mouth.

He truly smiled at me then. “When the time seems right, you will stand and begin to move, still beating out the tempo,” he explained through his curved lips. “It will have become faster.”

“Will you signal me?”

He picked up another strawberry, bit it and touched the rest to my mouth.

With my lips, I took it, my gaze fixed on him. He daubed with a fingertip at the corner of his mouth as though there might be a fleck of fruit there, then reached out and touched my lower lip.

I hadn’t seen the drop of blood on his finger, but I tasted it. My eyes widened.

“No,” he replied, and upended his cup of wine. “But you’ll know what shape your steps should take.” 

He glanced towards the gallery. 

A flutter of notes came from the flute, but then I heard a clarinet, an oboe and then a bassoon. I squinted in hopes of discerning if others had joined the four I had seen playing earlier, but their candles were half-covered to light their scores and not their faces. The violinist tuned his strings, a second joined him and then a third. The music didn’t sound like it was going to be simple. 

Sherlock took my arm. “Ready?”

“As much as I’m going to be, I suppose.”

When we had reached the centre of the floor and Sherlock had indicated my place, the late arrival separated from the other guests and greeted Sherlock. He was a trim, fair-haired man with a pointed beard and spectacles that seemed to gleam with their own light. He was not ill-favoured, but there was something sharp and cold in his face that made me check the set of the knives in my sleeves. He spoke of his pleasure at meeting Sherlock after so very long and his voice had an oiliness that I could almost feel on my skin.

Sherlock tilted his head in acknowledgement, without speaking. 

The man bowed slightly then, taking one of Sherlock’s hands in both of his and raising it to his lips. It did not look like an act of obeisance to me and then he began to croon as his lips hovered over Sherlock’s skin.

The hair on the back of my neck rose.

If I wasn’t certain that I was not supposed to stab this man to death in the middle of the dance floor, he would have been dead or I would have been for making the attempt.

His hands caressed Sherlock’s and he spoke of the art of those fingers…

Fucking right.

…how they were the hands of a musician, an alchemist, a scholar. He extolled Sherlock’s genius and waxed eloquent upon his beauty.

_Cock No. 1._

I bit my lip.

Sherlock said not a word.

Nor did anyone else. I could hear them listening.

Cock One assured Sherlock he would become accustomed to his caresses in time.

_The presumptuous prick._

I glared daggers since I couldn’t throw them and ground my teeth.

_Careful of the dental work there, Watson._

And then he murmured something I couldn’t hear except for the word ‘father’ and I understood why Sherlock hadn’t reduced this reptile to heap of ash.

_You’re not the only one that limits his options._

Yeah.

I tried to breath as that sunk in. Succeeded partially. Whole new plan needed.

_It’s the new dance. Whatever it is about it that he couldn’t explain to you._

Our final dance was supposed to knock anybody flat that needed knocking over. 

_Something extra awful about this guy. He needs something other than passion to take him down._

Right. I mean, I can improvise, but it helps to have a general idea.

_Maybe that would limit your imagination._

Right. Following in the dark, then. 

The serpent was writhing about my neck, but the moon blade hadn’t gone cold. I wondered why.

_Maybe he’s too disgusting to touch with it._

That felt true.

I slipped out the knife tucked between my wrist and my right cuff, slid it into my belt on the side opposite to where my silver dagger was sheathed.

_Steady, Watson._

Just being prepared.

I glanced up at the gallery and caught Mrs Hudson watching us. She looked very cross. I held out one hand and gestured as though I was moving a bow across my arm. She nodded and turned away. The tuning of instruments got much louder. There had to be at least a dozen of them. I wasn’t sure how they were all fitting up there.

The sound seemed to rouse Sherlock. He stepped away from noisome Cock No. 1 and looked at me.

It seemed the time to kneel, so I did. Got down on one knee facing him, as if I knew exactly what I was doing and that had been the signal to do it. 

A drum and a flute began to play to each other. 

Softly, I clapped to their rhythm. 

Sherlock stood tall as though he was gathering himself in and raised the edge of his cloak until it covered his face. The jewels on it flashed, tiny white sparks burning through the dark cloth. 

A gust of wind blew through the open doors, its scent more of the seashore than of flowers. 

All the candles went out.

I wanted to grip a weapon.

_Steady._

I didn’t miss a beat.

A murmur rose from the guests, more like the wind than the voices of people and then, even that, died away.

Without the flicker of a candle, the musicians played on. The clarinet joined the flute and the drum.

Outside, the leaves rubbed against one another; silvery clouds raced past the moon. 

A bassoon took up the melody.

My eyes were adjusting to the gloom. I strained forward, squinting. Behind me, I heard rustling as others did the same.

Another clarinet joined in.

I clapped, sound rising up to meet the music drifting down, and in front of Sherlock’s cloak, a hand appeared, slim as a crescent moon, swaying to the music like a miniature dancer. 

On the terrace, petals scattered over stone and the last of the clouds scudded away. Moonlight flooded the room.

An oboe caressed the air.

Sherlock’s fingers opened and closed like a fan, his hand bending at the wrist above its white ruffle, the rest of his arm invisible in its black sleeve against the black cloak.

The tops of my fingers struck against my palm.

The flute sang. The flash of a trumpet caught my eye, moving side to side, over the rail of the gallery, panting.

The hand vanished. 

A horn cried for it.

Sherlock dropped his cloak. 

The full length of my fingers hit my palm.

_Steady, Watson._

Both Sherlock’s hands fluttered above his head; spread wings above the solemn mask of his face. The white of his shirt showed where his doublet was undone; a line leading down, opalescent in the moonlight. 

Another horn complained. 

I stood, my clapping more percussive, and began to prowl around Sherlock. 

I brushed against guests. They moved back.

A celeste tinkled. 

The doublet fell to the ground. From waist to brow, he reflected the moonlight, billowing sleeves rising and falling at his sides to the tide of the music. 

I circled, elbows out, palm striking palm.

The woodwinds called.

Sherlock’s hands twisted at his wrists as though they would fly away.

My feet fell in time to the music, palms striking, louder and louder.

Sherlock took a step towards me, another, a step back.

I pushed backwards into the crowd and they gave way.

He leaned back from the waist, and forward again, arms gliding through the air.

_Is he going to take flight?_

I’d never seen Sherlock do that. I knew he could. He told me of battles that had to have been in the air. Battles without me.

_He needs to be outside, then._

My circuit took me deeper into the crowd. They parted.

Sherlock followed.

I didn’t miss a beat, even stepping up the little stairs and over the threshold of the central doors.

Through the other doors, the guests followed, Cock One in the fore.

Sherlock stood framed in the doorway, shoulders back, arms back, hands twisting, fingers fanning. 

I heard the slide of a trombone.

Cock One was clapping.

I growled.

_Steady._

Sherlock stepped onto the terrace, feet bare. 

I clapped louder. The stones echoed with it.

Damn right. It’s not your fucking house, fucker.

_Steady._

I never missed a beat. My blood beat in time to it now.

The woodwinds wailed as the musicians followed out the doors.

_How’d they get down so fast?_

Flew, for all I know. Maybe there was an army of them waiting in the music room, on the gallery stairs, in the shadows, behind the curtains.

I turned at the lilies, no longer circling, but describing an arc, whose apex was closer and closer to the edge of the terrace and the stairs leading down to the water.

_Why?_

Don’t know. I think that’s where Sherlock wants to go.

The wind picked up.

Seemed like agreement to me.

Sherlock moved closer, flowing with the music, glowing with the moon.

Cock had been pushed towards the back of the crowd as it shifted with us. He raised his hands over his head to clap.

Fucker.

There were violinists pouring out the doors now. Some wearing powdered wigs.

The light flickered, wisps of cloud drifting past the moon.

I smiled and smashed my hands together. We were luring him into the river.

_Why?_

Who knows? No, Sherlock knows and I feel it.

I started down the river stairs.

Sherlock followed.

The guests squeezed between the urns, leaning over the balustrade on both sides to watch.

Not fucker though; he came down the stairs after Sherlock.

I stepped onto the barge. It dipped. I kept my balance, sat, without missing a beat.

_You’re improving._

Yeah.

Sherlock stepped in after me, arms extended to either side, hands describing waves.

The boat didn’t even rock.

_That’s impossible._

Not here.

Sherlock pivoted to face the house.

An appreciative ooh rose from the onlookers.

I nodded to the boatman. 

With a long pole, he pushed us away from the landing.

Fucker reached the bottom step, cursing at the boatman, calling him back, still clapping and swaying to the music.

The boatman headed out to the middle of the river.

Must not like Fucker. 

_Maybe he fancies Sherlock._

I glanced at the man. He was leaning on his pole, holding us in place, his eyes on Sherlock.

Yeah, well just to look at Sherlock’s worth a risk.

My hands found each other of their own accord.

The musicians were on the top steps now, their music rolling out over the water, louder and louder.

Sherlock’s arms arced above his head, crossed and flowed down again.

Fucker stepped off the landing, cloak spreading out on the water behind him. It came up to his waist. He continued to clap, walking slowly towards us, spectacles gleaming, arms raised higher as the water rose to his chest.

A wind blew along the river, swirling Sherlock’s hair about his head.

The light dimmed. Dark clouds glowered in front of the moon. A few, large raindrops hit the bottom of the boat.

The water had reached Fucker’s neck now and still he walked along the river bottom towards us, hands above his head now, clapping.

The music reached a crescendo.

The sky growled. The clouds flashed. Lightning struck the water.

For an instant, Fucker looked ecstatic; head thrown back, mouth open, hands paused mid-clap and then he slipped from sight. I stared at the spot where he’d disappeared beneath the water. Ripples faded away.

Thunder growled, a deep satisfied sound.

The boatman manoeuvred us towards the shore.

I glanced at the sky; the clouds were drifting off. I looked back at the water. It was bright with the moonlight. No more rain fell. 

The sound I heard was applause.

Along the edges of the terrace, the crowd was expressing their appreciation. The musicians bowed.

I checked the water again to see if Fucker was going to pop out of it, applauding his own performance. 

The surface of the river was an unbroken glaze of moonlight.

The boat reached the landing. Sherlock stepped onto it and bowed.

The crowd cheered.

I hadn’t thought they had that in them.

Somewhere amidst the noise, I heard the jester’s laugh.

Couldn’t he have joined the Fucker at the bottom of the river? Maybe snake boy, too? 

_No, they’re already mad._

Fucker wasn’t?

_Don’t think so. Cool, cold evil._

He seemed to like the feel of it though, in the end.

_Yes._

I followed Sherlock onto the landing and up the steps.

Inside a bell rang, a cool, silvery sound. 

The guests and the musicians all turned to go inside. The candles were burning brightly again.

Sherlock looked at me.

“Are you all right?”

I nodded.

“You just saw a man die.”

“He wasn’t a very nice man.”

“No,” Sherlock agreed, “he wasn’t.”

I tilted my head towards the river. “So, is that a traditional thing? A sacrifice to the river?”

Sherlock scowled and shook his head. “People are giving them dead bodies all the time. They don’t like it, prefer live ones...who stay alive.” He smiled a little. “Ones having sex together, preferably.”

I snorted and filed that away. “But it accepted another nasty one anyway.”

“Assault, rape, blackmail – yes, he must have tasted dreadful, but he was threatening me. River takes that very seriously.” We had reached the door. “The rain will help wash it away.”

I looked back at the sky. The clouds had nearly obscured the moon.

Inside, the bell sounded again.

“Dinner?” Sherlock asked.

“Starving,” I replied and we stepped over the threshold.

Behind us, the skies opened up.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The music to which Sherlock dances at the end of the chapter is Ravel's [_Bolero_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9CMPOz1SaQ) and many movements in his dance, especially the beginning, are based on [Béjart's ballet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tc-Kwyu8ic) of the same name. (The screen looks blank at the beginning of the video, but that's how it's supposed to be for several seconds.)


	5. Thistle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John learns more about the other two suitors and a bit more about himself.
> 
>  **Excerpt:** “No honour among the malevolent, John.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Patient Readers, I have no idea how I thought I was going to fit all of this into one chapter, as it has now, as you can see, grown into three!

I had done dinner justice: emptied silver shells of fish; made roots and sprouts, full of colour and savour, disappear; and relished a soup, so unusual in flavour I knew it had to be a concoction of Sherlock’s. I’d given voice to my appreciation and he’d seemed pleased. 

Yet I could not give myself over fully to the pleasures of the table with the jester’s tintinnabulation intruding into every pause in the music or the conversation. Neither could I ignore the incantatory voice on the other side of Sherlock. I kept having to resist the urge to lift the tablecloth to see what Wild Eyes might be attempting under its cover.

“Shall we start calling you Salome, Sherlock?” he said, his hungry eyes sweeping over Sherlock’s chest and shoulders and opening wider as he stared at Sherlock’s face. “Just the head not enough for you?”

Sherlock’s lips barely moved as he said something terse in reply I couldn’t hear. 

“The lightning was a sweet touch,” Wild Eyes said. “I actually didn’t see that coming. I bet ol’ Magnus didn’t either.”

Sherlock inclined his head at the compliment. It seemed to thaw his reserve somewhat.

“So little surprises me,” Wild Eyes lamented. “I’d almost forgotten how good a really _good_ surprise feels.”

_Substitute ‘shag’ for ‘surprise’ in that sentence._

I’m trying not to, there are so many knives on the table.

Then, he started in on the touching.

Sherlock remained without doublet or cloak. Wild Eyes’ hand was that much closer to Sherlock’s skin as he stroked up and down the linen sleeve. His fingertips were tracing the shape of Sherlock’s muscles through the thin cloth. He leaned a bit closer as he stared up into Sherlock’s eyes.

“Offer still stands,” he crooned, “for you…” He looked past Sherlock at me. “…and your little, green man.” His eyes dropped to the table’s edge and lingered as though he could see through it. “All this waiting for dancing and electrocuting must have you both on edge.”

He turned his gaze back to Sherlock, but seemed to continue addressing me. “I’ve been waiting for an answer from him for years, but he’s such a difficult butterfly to pin down.”

Sherlock met those wild eyes with a look I usually see when he’s at his microscope.

“He’s worth the wait though, because beneath that icy shell, I know he’s on fire, too.” Wild Eyes glanced back at me, his hand slipping up Sherlock’s arm as he spoke, kneading the flesh as he went. “You saw it straight away, too. I can tell. I admire clear-sightedness in a man.”

I couldn’t understand why Sherlock hadn’t dispatched this creature. Perhaps it wasn’t polite to incinerate guests inside the house.

_He’s mad._

The insanity defence, is it? Well, he needs to be locked up, then, for his own protection.

_And your peace of mind?_

Yes! Or I’m going to kill him here, before the coffee is served.

He seemed aware of my homicidal intentions and his eyes gleamed at me.

“Any dances free up?” he asked with that song in his voice that was infuriating and alluring at the same time.

In the gallery, an oboe sounded; strings vibrated.

“No.” Sherlock gave one of his gargoyle smiles to Wild Eyes, pushed back his chair, gripped my arm and led me away.

It was not very decorous, and I could have used the caffeine, but it was just as well.

*** 

The music had a sedate air after dinner; the conversations were quieter. The guests traced the figures of their dances with a stately grace, as did we. In the lulls between songs, I did not always hear the jester’s laugh or the jangle of his bells. 

And yet, below the apparent languor of a long night drawing to a close, there thrummed an energy, a taut wire of expectation that encircled the crowd. Whispers stopped as we danced past, and, as the moon over the river approached the treetops, more and more bright eyes were turned upon us.

“Are they waiting for our last dance?”

Sherlock’s hand smoothed down my back. “Yes.”

“Why do they care whether one of us is lured away from the other?” 

He shook his head. “I can’t explain more yet.”

Although my feet remained sure, fatigue was beginning to dull my brain; I lacked the alertness to deal with one more puzzle. Resting my head on Sherlock’s chest was what I wanted to do, but our current dance, a waltz of some sort, didn’t bring us close enough. “Can you tell me then, why they were so pleased…Magnus…met his end? Or was it all part of the entertainment?”

_Feeling cross?_

Tired.

“He wasn’t invited.”

“Death to gate crashers?”

“Not exactly. Many people here have had dealings with him one way or another. Unpleasant dealings,” Sherlock explained.

I scowled. “What could he do to _them_?”

“Almost everyone has someone without our…abilities, who is important to them. He made it his business to find out who cared for whom and used threats against the more vulnerable individual to control the stronger one. He’s been doing it for quite a while, although I hadn’t become aware until last year when one of the guests here came to ask for my help on behalf of her husband. Unfortunately, I had to quell that disturbance in the Artic and wasn’t able to solve his problem before he affected his own solution, removing the burden from his wife’s life by killing himself.”

I had noticed a woman with a glistening face standing quietly among the applauding throng on the terrace. I had thought it possible that she was shedding a tear for the recently deceased.

_Well, she was._

You know who I meant.

I surveyed the room and spotted her in a small group of people, talking. She caught my eye and gently inclined her head.

“Well, I was certainly happy to see him boiled, but I didn’t understand why everyone else was.”

“And now you do.”

“And now I do,” I repeated. I drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “So what’s Wild-Eyed Boy do to amuse himself other than try to seduce you?”

“I’m not sure Jim’s ever been interested in me physically…”

_Oh, you’ve got that so wrong, sweet cheeks._

Hey!

_You agree with me though._

Yeah, I do.

“He tries to keep himself entertained by bringing his talents to bear on diverting problems and makes the people who bring their problems to him pay a great deal as part of the fun. He never cares about the havoc he wreaks as long as the solution is clever, and because he thinks I’m nearly as clever as he is, he’s always wanted me to join his enterprise. If he could seduce me, he assumed I would be more likely to agree.”

_Don’t ask him, Watson._

I didn’t ask. I’m not sure I wanted to know whether Wild-Eyed Jim had ever made Sherlock the least bit curious.

“Shouldn’t Greg be arresting him or something?” I thought I had glimpsed Lestrade in a black velvet half-mask earlier in the evening.

“Jim never gets close enough to the execution of his solutions for there to be any evidence implicating him.”

“Still, isn’t being here a risk?”

“Jim loves risks. Helps relieve the boredom that plagues him.”

“I got that he was barking,” I said.

“Did you?” Sherlock regarded me. “It took me quite some time.”

_Helps to have grown up around crazy people._

Yeah.

“And the jester? Why does he want to ‘woo’ you?”

“To feast on me,” Sherlock said matter-of-factly.

My back stiffened. “Figuratively?” I whispered and knew I was wrong.

“He gave up blood; too easy to obtain these days he says.” Sherlock turned us around. “Dread and panic are his sustenance now. He inhales despair; claims it is the headiest perfume. He’s cultivated an addiction to it, craves stronger and stronger doses. Brought to despair, he thinks I would be particularly intoxicating.”

Despite the wine and the dinner in me, my skin broke out in gooseflesh. Sherlock did not sound like it was such a far-fetched circumstance. “But how could he ever…”

The music faded away and we stood still. About us, no one chattered. The air quivered in the silence.

“He hopes that I’ll volunteer,” Sherlock replied, looking away.

_You’re in danger, Johnny._

I hate when you call me that.

_Danger, Johnny. Strobe light-flashing, siren-wailing danger._

I considered Sherlock’s set jaw and pressed my lips together, so I didn’t say anything aloud that would give me away, just in case he can’t read my thoughts. I’ve seen only a fraction of what he can do. I know that. Of course, his destruction would have to come from within. I tightened my fingers between his. 

Across the vast room, a single bell tinkled. 

We’ll see who has the last laugh tonight, you jingling fucker.

*** 

Sherlock took a sip from his flask and urged me to finish the rest.

I did and handed it back. “How soon?” I asked, itching for confrontation.

Discordant notes fell from the gallery.

“A couple minutes…” He looked up at the winged creatures flying through the starry sky of the ceiling. “I’m supposed to tell you at this point that you could withdraw.” Their chariot disappeared behind a cloud-shrouded moon above the doors leading out to the double staircase to the roof.

“You really think I could?”

He glanced down at me and scowled. “John?”

I raised a forefinger, touched it to his lips. “This time, _I’ll_ explain later.”

One of his eyebrows went up. He was trying for insouciance, but a shadow passed over his face.

I drew my finger away, pulled my shoulders back and held out my hand, palm up.

“You need to say it though.” 

“I do not withdraw, Sherlock,” I said.

Sherlock looked from my face to my hand and to my face once more. He was searching for something there. 

“May I have this dance?” I asked, hoping that he had found it.

“I would dance with no other.”

Eyes fixed on him, I lowered my chin and extended my hand a little further. “Let’s show them, then.”

He almost smiled and put his hand in mine.

Guests stepped out of our way as we walked to the middle of the room and I could see that a section of the parquet had been cleared for us. We turned to face one another, unclasped our hands for a moment, and bowed.

The musicians began to play. A multitude of them.

*** 

Sherlock was trying to watch my eyes. I bowed my head and looked up at him from beneath my brows. My hands were clamped around his forearms. I had pulled him close enough for his elbows to need to bend. I dug my thumbs into the tracery of veins at his wrists. His eyes opened wide with the pain. I pushed my weight on his arms and he went down on his knees. I pressed again to keep him there. He bit his lip to stop from crying out, but his eyes had cleared for a bit. He had understood.

I lifted his left arm, kissed his wrist where a bruise would surely form and set his hand on his right shoulder; did the same with the right wrist, so that his arms crossed his chest. His fingers tightened in the linen at his shoulders to keep his arms in place. It was a ward. Whether I was able to make it strong enough to be of any use, I didn’t know. 

He looked up at me; eyes not completely focussed. I bent to kiss his forehead and placing one foot directly behind the other, backed away. Albeit blearily, his eyes followed me.

 

After we had traced the pattern of our dance once on the floor, I knew something was wrong. Our lines were there, I could see them, but they had little light where they crossed and not a single leaf sprouted from any of them. I had asked why, but Sherlock had merely shaken his head, leaning more of his weight upon me. I hadn’t had time to think it through, but he was losing the ability to stand and some instinct told me that he shouldn’t fall across our design, that the little we had laid down was at least some protection. So, I brought him to his knees in the centre where our steps hadn’t fallen and hoped I could re-enforce the pattern on my own. 

The music, which had accommodated the interruption to our dance with a flight of improvisation, resumed its beat when I reached the edge of periphery of the design. From there, I retraced every one of my steps to the tempo. 

The glow of my lines brightened; Sherlock’s remained mere shimmers on the parquet. I had attempted to reinforce his, but the tips of my toes touching one line had produced the scent of burning leaves. I lifted my foot and kept to my lines. If I couldn’t strengthen his, I’d re-enforce mine with enough passion for the two of us. I hoped that could work. I hoped it with a passion. I danced it with a passion that felt remarkably like fear. 

There were singers on the gallery now or maybe the winged creatures painted on the ceiling sang. The voices rose, urging me on. My footsteps hit to their beat, harder and harder, until the floor resounded like a drum. With each stomp, our fortress walls rose higher. They would block every attempt against us. All of us. And within their safety, I could tend to Sherlock. 

I moved a quarter circle from where I had started retracing, heel at right angle to toes, jagged steps for a jagged edge, then stepped carefully between our designs in another line towards the centre, where Sherlock knelt. Precision under pressure. It was something I knew how to do, although I usually performed with my hands. When I reached him, I had created two lines, straight as arrows, or the spokes of a wheel, pulsing green with the light of a glow-worm, a very long one.

Sherlock swayed slightly, even though he was sitting back on his heels. I placed my hand on his head. His hair was damp. Quickly, I stepped a quarter of the way round him and back to the rim of the circle. I had three lines. Why they were important, I didn’t know, but they were. I retraced my designs again. They glowed brighter, bleeding slightly into Sherlock’s lines, where they crossed. I danced barbs along another quarter of the border and headed back to him, a fourth straight line. 

The music diminished to a hum. A soloist sang, high and plaintive. A chorus answered her, low and fierce.

Drums took up the beat and my wheel began to turn, grating and grinding, stone against stone. Sparks spewed into the room from the jagged edges and the quadrants, half-filled with silver, green, gold or red lines, turned with it. The guests stepped back. Among them, I saw Wild-eyed Jim. He saw that I saw him and took a half-step forward, his hands raised in front of his chest as though he might applaud, the sparks reflected in his eyes.

I turned to Sherlock. Dismissed everything else in the room. His head and shoulders were bowed. His hands had dropped to his thighs. 

I crouched in front of him and looked up into his face. His muscle tone was slack, his eyes barely open, his breathing shallow. Shaded by his curls, I couldn’t judge his colour. I seized him below his shoulders and brought him to a more upright position. His skin looked grey. Where my grip had tugged open the collar of his shirt, I saw his torc hanging down either side of his neck, its silver scales tarnished, its jewelled eyes closed. A band of fear constricted around my heart. 

Under my chin, I felt the flick of a tongue, heard a hiss. My torc uncoiled and skittered down my arm inside my sleeve. It wriggled out at my cuff; stretched and sniffed and nipped at the limp dragon around Sherlock’s neck. Then it reared back and bit my wrist.

I drew in a pained breath.

Blood trickled down my arm. A red tongue darted over my skin, removing every drop, then the creature wielding it stretched out and bit behind the head of Sherlock’s serpent. Its tail twitched as it was dragged from Sherlock’s neck and dropped to the floor.

My serpent slipped the rest of the way out of my sleeve and onto its comrade, holding it down with red claws and biting along its spine, lower and lower, biting and licking, its wings half opening, then closing.

I stared. Sherlock had said the creature would defend me, but I couldn’t see the connection between its actions and my well-being at the moment. 

The jaws of Sherlock’s serpent opened. Its lolling tongue was nearly white. From between its teeth, a grey, sluggish form protruded.

The golden dragon bit again, gradually moving up the tarnished spine of its mate. The slug-like thing emerged fully and my serpent clamped its jaws together behind a gaping, tooth-rimmed mouth; its tail tightening below the smaller mouth at the other end of the creature, which I recognised finally as a leech. It squirmed and gasped. Its breath smelt of rotting meat and made me snort. Then, with a faint tinkle and a puff of fetid smoke, it disappeared. My dragon hissed and spat on the floor, where something viscous sizzled a while and was gone.  
It had taken two serpents to kill it.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the cloth over Sherlock’s shoulder shift.

My dagger was in my hand before I had finished drawing in another tainted breath. I sliced through seams and ripped linen. Jaws firmly attached to Sherlock’s shoulder, a glistening, bloated leech wriggled in the air. A filigree of grey lines was spreading outwards from where it adhered. It should be too soon for the wound to be necrotising, but the stink of the other leech made me doubt. Before my eyes, the leech’s hind mouth attached to Sherlock’s flesh. 

My lip curled.

_Steady, Watson._

Yes. Very steady. 

A little present from the jester as we passed through the crowd. For once, he must have been silent and I had not seen him. 

“There is a leech on you, Sherlock. Not an ordinary one,” I whispered. “The skin around it is already dying, so I’m going to cut it away.” The only reply I heard was a slightly louder exhalation of breath.

With my dagger, I severed the leather thong about my neck, grasped the handle of the moon blade and cut an oval of flesh away from Sherlock’s shoulder with it. I flicked it onto the ground and inspected my excision. It remained white and bloodless for longer than it ought and when the blood finally welled up, it was thick and far too dark.

_It wasn’t just sucking blood out._

No. It was dripping something in and it’s probably all through his system by now.

Sherlock’s breathing deepened, but his colour didn’t improve. He slumped against me. 

Moon blade in hand, I stroked his hair and watched the blood slowly fill the slight concavity of my excision. No new grey lines formed.

_Were you expecting a miraculous recovery once the thing was off him?_

Maybe. The miraculous isn’t rare around here.

Another flicker of motion caught my eye. The discarded leech was inching across the floor, dragging Sherlock’s shrivelling flesh with it. It was already half-way to the edge of our design, creeping along one of my straight lines, even as it rotated. Right-handed, I threw my silver dagger over Sherlock’s bleeding shoulder. The knife hit home with a thump, the tip pinning the leech to the floor. 

A murmur rose from the crowd and I remembered that there were other people with us. 

Why don’t they help us?

_Circle of magic fire around you, remember?_

Either I did something more effective than I realised I was able to do or they don’t want to help.

_Not even his parents?_

Fine. OK. They can’t. I’m better at this than I thought. Fine time to have got this good.

The skewered leech released Sherlock’s flesh and raised its empty maws. Smoke curled up from them and I thought I heard bells jangling. When the smoke wafted past me, I gagged.

_Seasoned surgeon, eh?_

You have no sense of smell. 

A sharp pain in my leg distracted me from the stench. The golden dragon was up on its hind legs and biting into my thigh. On the floor, Sherlock’s dragon was scrabbling to get its feet under itself. Its silver scales shone in the fiery light, as it collapsed back onto its belly. 

My dragon yanked the torn cloth of my trousers out of the way and bit more deeply into my flesh. 

I managed not to shout and refrained from backhanding it; its fangs were too deep in my leg for that to work well.

I panted until it withdrew. The puncture wounds bled slowly. The dragon licked up the droplets and resumed biting its comrade. My wounds closed. 

Against me, Sherlock began to tremble. I unhooked my cloak, wrapped it around him and held him to me.

“Don’t leave me, Sherlock,” I whispered. My leg burned and a tremor ran up my arm. I buried my face in his hair. It smelt sour. “Fight it. Fight it for me.” 

_Watson, you fool. What does Sherlock ever need when he’s injured? And in case you’ve forgotten, you’ve had a bleeding demonstration--literally._

I’m not in the mood for riddles.

The room throbbed with the beat of drums. The ebb and flow of a rhythm I knew, of blood through a beating heart that was slowing down. I hid my face in Sherlock’s hair. “Don’t leave _me_.”

There was laughter. Loud and joyous.

The air grew icy. I held Sherlock more tightly. Why don’t I know what to do? Sherlock’s often hurt, I always knew what to do. I was his doctor. I _am_ his doctor. Why can’t I think?

_Get up, Watson! Get up and bleed. If something’s sucking on you, you can find it later. Get up now and give him blood! Lots of it!_

What if it’s contaminated, too?

_It can’t be as contaminated as his. Bleed!_

I steadied Sherlock with a hand on his uninjured shoulder and stood. It took me a long time, as though the air were congealing, and once I was upright, he slumped against my legs and almost overbalanced me. His knuckles cracked against the floor. I winced and wanted to bend back down to kiss them.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. 

_Bleed, Watson!_

Another peal of laughter rang out, louder than the drums.

I looked around. Surely someone would help.

_You’re already here, Watson. You’re all the help he needs. The only help he needs._

Beyond our circle of sparks, the room was dark. Inside, my part of our design glowed weakly. Sherlock’s part was barely there.

“Don’t fade away, Sherlock, please.”

The laughter echoed off the walls.

_Bleed, Watson!_

Blood. Yes, the blood in me.

The moon blade was in my left hand. I hadn’t let go of it. I raised it high and it caught all the colours of the sparks encircling us, drew them into its pearly depths. I stared at the patterns they made. The blade was so beautiful and Sherlock had made it for me. 

With one downward swipe, I sliced through tunic and shirt and flesh. 

There was a sigh through the trees.

I held the knife out to my side. My chest burned. The blood was warm against my skin. 

I bent over Sherlock and let it pour over his wound; knotted my fingers in his hair and pulled his head back to let the blood flow into his mouth.

_You cut too deep._

Doesn’t matter. He has what he needs. 

“Drink.” In my head, a chorus of endearments clamoured to be spoken. I said again, “Drink.”

He pressed his lips together and swallowed.

“Drink,” I whispered and wanted to kiss his blood-stained mouth.

His tongue darted over his lips and he swallowed again.

Between the streaks of blood, I saw the grey receding, his shoulder wound closing. 

This was as it should be. I breathed.

He opened his eyes. They were clear. He looked at me and he saw me.

This was as it should be. I tried to smile at him. “Drink,” I murmured.

A long-fingered hand closed about my arm and pulled me down. I saw him bite his lip. Oh, how I wanted to kiss it. He kissed the cut in my chest instead.

_Far too deep._

I was shaking.

Sherlock pulled me lower still. My knees buckled and I half fell on him. I slid down to sit on the floor. My head was on his shoulder, his on mine. One of his arms was around me. It was a parody of dancing, a still life, except for the rise and fall of our backs as we pulled in air and the knife in my outstretched hand. 

“It was despair, John,” Sherlock whispered in my ear. “He must have fed the leeches on his dying victims’ blood, storing up their despair to use on people whom he couldn’t bring to feel it in any other way.”

I felt his forefinger stroke my lip. It was wet. I drew it into my mouth and the shaking stopped.

“You got a little of it when your dragon bit you after biting mine.” 

“You saw that?” I asked.

“I did, but couldn’t do anything, not even speak. A large dose acts like a paralytic.”

My head was clearing. I huffed. “That’s cheating, isn’t it? Artificially induced despair?” 

“No honour among the malevolent, John.”

His hand slid off my back. He leaned to the side and pressed his palm over a part of the inner edge of our design – on one of his lines. It grew more distinct near his hand, a pale silvery-blue. The colour spread, grew more intense.

“Are you strong enough to be doing that?”

“Your blood always works a treat,” he replied. “I still haven’t identified exactly why.” He reached past me. 

I looked over my shoulder and saw a line brightening under his other hand. I twisted around until my back was against his chest and watched the pattern change as his lines began to glow and our colours merged where they crossed.

“Where did you learn what you did along the outer edge there?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Our design wasn’t finished; you were ill. I needed to protect you.”

Sherlock sniffed, paused, sniffed again. “Sulphur,” he said, “probably from pyrite. You called it up from the clay in a precise formation and set it in motion. I am impressed.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I confessed. “I was desperate.” 

_You could have just taken the compliment._

I didn’t know what I was doing.

“Interesting,” Sherlock said. “The adrenaline would have helped you. It has the opposite effect on some individuals. We need to explore this, but for now we need it to stop. Do you want to try your hand at it or shall I?”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Oh, you will. Very soon, I think. I’ll handle it now. Can you stand?”

I took a few deep breaths and rubbed my palms along my thighs. My brain seemed my own again and my leg didn’t hurt.

“I think so,” I said. “And you?”

“As soon as the last parts of the design are finished, we’ll try. And if we succeed, I’ll slow down your wheels within wheels.”

“You’re not going to stop them?” I asked, bending one leg and then the other to see if the blood was flowing properly through them.

“Let’s see what’s waiting on the other side first. It’s a very good barrier,” Sherlock said. 

Accidentally achieved or not, I couldn’t help feeling chuffed. Who knew I had latent engineering skills.

_Let’s not overdo it, Watson. It’s just a stone wheel rotating around a smaller cog._

A minute ago, you wanted me to accept praise for it.

_It solved the problem to hand. I’d hold off on plans for a career change._

Fine, fine. The different colours are pretty though.

_What are they about?_

I have no idea.

Sherlock sat back. The pattern was finished. Stalks were sprouting where lines crossed, small leaves unfurled and buds formed as I watched. “It’s a season wheel,” he said. “Quite appropriate for an equinox.” He stared at me. “You didn’t intend that either.”

“Nope.”

“Oh, John, we have so much to do once we have the manor back to ourselves.” One long leg arced over my head. 

God, the thoughts that gave me. 

“Take it slowly. You lost a lot of blood.”

“I didn’t lose it. I know exactly where it went.” Sherlock rolled his eyes at me. “Your parents staying long?” I asked, rising cautiously to my knees. No light-headedness.

Sherlock stood, adjusted my cape over his bare shoulder, draping it over the front of his bloody shirt. It hid the worst of it, but where he’d wiped his mouth on the other sleeve showed. “They never do. It’s against their nature as peripatetic creatures.” He held out his hand to me. “Our childhood was a trial for them.”

Steadying myself on his forearm, I achieved a vertical position. I looked down at myself. My bare chest was visible almost to my navel. Under the drying blood, my skin was whole again, but the bottom of my tunic was dark with blood, the linen scarlet with it. I held on.

Sherlock stared at the floor. Spilt blood formed an irregular outline around where we had been seated. Pointed green leaves were sprouting from the darkening stains. “Thistles.” He looked at me. “I should have predicted that.” He frowned. “Mind where you step, the leather of your shoes is soft.”

His scowl deepened.

A soft chuckle seemed to surround us.

Sherlock held a hand out, moved his fingers as though conducting a tune. “Have a weapon to hand. Culvert isn’t likely to be pleased when he can see more clearly once the sparks die down.”

I slipped the moon blade into my belt. I wasn’t going to risk its being contaminated by his foul blood. 

_Expecting a bloody encounter then?_

Let’s just say, I’m ready for one.

I eased a slender dagger past the cuff of my sleeve. It would serve. 

The fountain of sparks around us dwindled until it marked the edge of the circle with a frothing border no higher than my ankle. Afterimages danced before my eyes and it was several seconds before I could make out more than the vaguest shapes beyond its perimeter.

The music grew gentle, the drumbeat muffled, steady.

I looked about, holding my knife point upwards along the inside of my arm, ready for when I understood upon whom I might need to use it.

A nervous titter in front of me clarified matters. Culvert stood at the edge of the circle, jingling a little to my left, face lit from below on one side by the border glowing green at his feet, and on the other by the silvery blue light of the adjacent quadrant and the line leading from where Sherlock stood to the edge.

_Bad choice of location._

Yes.

He was near where I would be strongest. Well, a couple steps to the right would have been in the middle of the quarter and that would have been even worse for him.

_How do you know this?_

It’s what we ushered in tonight, isn’t it? Look at everything growing around us. We brought spring.”

_I think it might have arrived with or without your intercession._

I thought of how pale our first lines had been on the floor. 

I’m not so sure about that.

Culvert sputtered. “No, no, no! How can you be standing?” He grimaced, then giggled. “A Herculean effort, but surely you are about to keel over. You must feel the weakness in your limbs.” He leered at us. “You feel it, don’t you? Creeping up on you, drear and inescapable? All your failures, your incompetence, every time you disappointed someone?” 

Sherlock took my hand and held it up as though we might promenade past Culvert, or perhaps directly at him and raise our linked arms even higher to pass over him.

_Perhaps that would make him disappear._

Oh, that it would.

“I feel remarkably well,” Sherlock replied, “although my garments are much the worse for wear.” He glanced at me. “Do you feel well, Doctor Watson?”

My turn. 

I grinned at Culvert. “I’m in remarkably good form,” I said and directed my gaze to where my silver dagger stuck up from the floor.

Culvert followed my line of sight and frowned at the upright blade. “You can’t feel well.” He snickered. “Sherlock is fading away as we speak. See how pale and wan he is.”

There was some dire music in his words. I shivered.

He sniggered. “No one can withstand two of my leeches – not even a fine, tall fellow like Sherlock. Mind, you’ve done well to be standing at all right now. You have surprised me, but it won’t last. The ichor is in his blood; it can’t be cut out. It’s killing him now. Think how desolate you will feel when he’s gone. The despair as you think on how you weren’t able to help him one jot.”

“I don’t fade away easily,” Sherlock said. “I have something of a reputation for being indestructible.” He took a step forward, gripping my hand more tightly.

I moved with him, nodding my agreement. The echoes of Culvert’s words receded.

Culvert shook his head. Bells jangled. One fell off and clattered on the floor. His eyes slid to it and back to Sherlock.

“No one I chose survived, Mr Holmes. Not a one, and you won’t either. Try to resist as you might, I’ll leave with what I came here to collect tonight. You may not want to come with me, but you’ll come all the same. You have no choice; it got past all your defences and it’s in your blood now.”

We moved another step closer.

Culvert turned his eyes on me. “You have a choice though, Doctor Watson. You can stay behind and endure your loneliness. Ponder how you couldn’t do anything for him. What did you try to do? Cut it out of him? Is that why you’re both covered in blood? Are you even a doctor, _Doctor_ Watson? How could you think you could ever be a dancer, you barber, you butcher?”

We took another step.

“I have a choice,” Sherlock said and his voice had gone impossibly deep, “and it’s to survive.”

“You can’t. Struggle as much as you like against it. I like to watch the stronger ones struggle for a while with the effects of the first leech, but the second one always ends it.”

A scratching sound along the floor made me look down. The two dragons were circling our feet. Sherlock’s stood on its hind feet and began to climb his trouser leg.

“Not for me, it doesn’t.”

Culvert eyed the silven beast clambering up Sherlock’s side.

“None of the others have a creature like these?” Sherlock asked, stroking the serpent’s back. “They are so loyal. I don’t suppose you’d understand that. They’d attack anything that tried to harm us.”

Culvert pursed his lips. “I’ll kill them, too, then.”

“Oh, I don’t think you will,” Sherlock said. 

A black-gloved hand came around Culvert’s face from behind, another pulled his arm around his back, and judging by his grimace, yanked it up high. “I think you’ve said enough for tonight,” Lestrade said, his features still half-hidden by his mask. “But we’ll give you a chance to say more tomorrow and all the tomorrows after.”

Two attendants emerged from the dimness behind Lestrade. One fastened Culvert’s hands behind his back, the other bound Culvert’s legs at the ankles. Lestrade tied a velvet band around Culvert’s mouth, and, drawing a silver dagger, much like my own, from its sheath, cut the bells from the jester’s hat. One of the attendants collected the bells from the floor. When he stood, Lestrade nodded and the two shouldered Culvert like a rolled carpet and turned towards the terrace doors.

As they turned, horns sounded triumphant from the gallery. The candles flared and I could see the guests clearly again. They shrank back from the attendants, giving them a wide passage clear to the door and those that had fans used them vigorously. The stench was the same as had accompanied the leeches’ demise, only much stronger.

I coughed.

“It was the one method of communication Lestrade didn’t neutralise,” Sherlock said.

“More’s the pity.” I tucked the knife in my hand back into my sleeve and bent to pull my silver dagger from the floor. My serpent took the opportunity to leap onto my shoulder. A moment later, I felt it coiling about my throat. “It’s not true, what he said about the poison being in your blood, is it?”

“As far as he knew, it was,” Sherlock said, stepping closer and lowering his voice. “He’s never sampled your blood.”

I shuddered – a full body shudder, at the idea.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, “repugnant fellow.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“The boatman should be waiting at the bottom of the terrace steps to transport them to the Tower. I’m sure they will find accommodation that will suit him. Permanently.”

“Do they still do that there?” I asked.

“Not these days,” Sherlock said.

“Right.”

He let go of my hand, strode to the edge of the circle, stooped then stood up straight with his hand raised above his head. It looked like what he does with police tape around a crime scene for me to walk under.

“What are you…”

“Just walk under, John. I’ve recently had surgery, you don’t want me overexerting myself.”

I joined him quickly and stepped over the fiery border and under his arm. It felt warmer outside the circle and Culvert’s stench was dissipating.

Sherlock stepped over the perimeter and lowered his hand. “The bottom edge of the boundary you created is at floor level, the upper boundary is about chest height now. I believe it was considerably higher when the sparks where spouting.”

Hmph.

From the gallery, a gentle melody floated, all strings and woodwinds.

“A highly commendable first effort, John. Making a gap in it and lifting it took some effort.”

“Oh.” My hand went up to his shoulder. “Nothing’s bleeding is it?”

“Of course not, but I wouldn’t mind sitting down whilst we wait out the next stage.” We weaved through the crowd. Guests stepped aside, smiling at us as we passed.

“Next?”

“The farewells, John. They’re not interminable, but they do often feel that way.”

We ensconced ourselves in the window seat closest to the minstrels’ gallery. Only one of the windows was open and steps hadn’t been placed by them. Sherlock leaned against the wall of the niche, I against the frame of the closed window. When he’d settled his legs across my thighs, he sighed. I curled one hand around his ankle, found the posterior tibial artery pulse point and savoured its beat. An attendant came with a tray of food. I looked at them and felt ravenous. Sherlock shook his head, but I took a plate of fruit and raisins and nuts and another of sweets and sat them on the cushion by me. I thought I could probably tempt him with the sweets after a while. 

Sherlock took his flask from his trousers’ pocket and held it out to me.

“I thought we finished that,” I said.

Sherlock waggled the flask at me. “We did, but that was over an hour ago.”

I took it from him. It was heavy. I opened it and drank. It was full. “That’s useful,” I remarked and handed it back.

Sherlock smiled and drank deep. “It is. Especially when it’s such a delicate formulation.”

I reached for the flask with one hand and held a tartlet out in the other. He took it, sniffed it and ate. I drank, felt the spark and burn of the elixir’s ingredients in different parts of my mouth. It watered and I had to move Sherlock’s legs a little lower on my thighs.

“So how long do farewells take?” I asked.

“Somewhat less than forever.” He sighed more melodramatically than before and held out his hand.

I gave him another tart and watched him eat.

***


	6. Leave-taking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The guests take their leave.
> 
>  **Excerpt:** Near the top of the stairs, in languages I didn’t know, Sherlock’s parents were bidding their guests a cordial good-night. Mycroft stood to one side, leaning against the balustrade, nodding at times in silent accord and gazing out over the crowd at others. No one intruded on his apparent distraction by addressing him. If he acknowledged them, they nodded to him in return; if he didn’t, they nodded to themselves and passed on. I wondered for whom he was searching; who it was they all seemed to know needed to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those patient souls who may read this, I apologise. It's been more than a year since the last chapter and that, although not a record for me, is far from what I intended when I set out to write a four-chapter second series in the span of a month. (Please take safety measures to not fall from your seat laughing.) Now, at least, I can tell you that the ball comes to an end!

My head lolled against the window casement. Each time I blinked, my eyes stayed closed longer. Opposite me, Sherlock leaned his elbows upon the window sill, his face turned towards the terrace, a plate nearly empty of food I hadn’t seen him eat balanced on his lap. I had, perhaps, kept my eyes closed longer than I had thought.

_No one would begrudge you sleep._

Not the done thing though, is it?

_Everyone would excuse it tonight. Something else is keeping you awake._

Not wanting to look a prat. Although I may already have failed at that.

_Something else._

I peered about me. The lamps had been extinguished, the room was a vast expanse of shadows striped with moonlight. All the windows to the terrace were open. A pale rectangle at the far end where doors led to the double staircase stood open as well. 

The minstrel’s gallery was quiet but for the occasional murmured word or the click of an instrument case closing. Their task had been taken up by the birds chorusing from the trees. As I watched, a bold trio swooped through the open windows and disappeared into the painted clouds of the ceiling. I tilted my head up to follow their long-tailed silhouettes. Their trills and whistles continued well after I lost sight of them. 

_Worried about the birds, are you?_

Don’t rule them out.

_So you are?_

No…I don’t think so.

In their own chorus of promises and farewells, the guests prepared to depart. Attendants glided among them bearing armfuls of cloaks and headdresses cast aside when dancing and feasting had warmed the blood. In the calmer and cooler air of leave-taking, they were donned again. As the guests shimmered past, they smiled benignly at Sherlock and me and I smiled vaguely back, squinting at the indistinct edges of them. Sherlock inclined his head graciously and I was grateful that they didn’t appear to expect more of us than that. 

“An unusually contented group,” Sherlock remarked.

I held up the plate of sweets from by my side and Sherlock plucked a rose-shaped bit of marzipan from it. 

“I thought you rarely attended these things.”

He held my gaze as he bit into the confection.

I managed to close my fingers around some fragrant, flaky thing from my plate without the aid of my eyes.

“Once I reached a certain age, I couldn’t always avoid them,” Sherlock replied around the dissolving sweet. “Much as I tried.” He swallowed and brushed a crumb from the corner of his lips. “But when I was too young to be allowed to attend, I would creep down to the terrace and spy on everyone for the whole night. The plants hid me and I saw a great deal.” He popped the rest of the sugary flower into his mouth.

“Sleep was never your thing, then,” I remarked, glancing out the window and picturing him in the shadow of one of the tall urns bursting with forsythia and hyacinths and overflowing with ivy. Unbidden, I imagined a wild-eyed boy crouched next to him. I shook my head to chase the vision away and wondered if I’d been bold enough to knock on the door as a lad and stay put when I heard the latch being undone, if I could have met Sherlock then; if I could have been the one with whom he made his youthful discoveries. 

I turned back to him, licked my fingers and dropped my mostly-clean hand onto his thigh. 

_The important thing is that you still have him now._

My fingers dug into the strong muscle above Sherlock’s knee and felt the hint of warmth there.

I have him now.

The splash of an oar and the resounding thump of wood against stone roused me from my reverie and I looked towards the river steps. Above them, a huge moon was sinking below the treetops on the far riverbank, outlining bare branches and evergreen boughs. Under its dappled light, the tide of guests rippled towards the stairs.

Sherlock plucked a white rose from my plate and stood upon the cushioned seat. “The ferryman’s back,” he said and held a hand out to me. “Come. You’ll enjoy watching them leave as much as I always did.” He took the whole sweet into his mouth, dusted his hand off on his breeches and braced it against the casement.

I snorted and took his outstretched hand, putting as little of my weight on him as I could manage. My legs were steadier than I thought they would be as we stepped over the window ledge onto the terrace.

Sherlock glided along the wall to the corner where the curved balustrade joined the side of the building and paused. I stopped just behind him and surveyed the terrace. We were in the shade thrown by the foliage of the nearest urn standing adjacent to the balustrade. To the east, massive trees hid the view along the near bank. Only the sound of the water hinted that the river continued to wend its way between them. Gnarled canes of climbing rose with thorns thicker than my fingers covered the stone wall of the house. Shoots red with young leaves and green buds arched away from it over the grassy verge between the wall and the canopy of the trees. I took care not to lean back against the stone.

Sherlock glanced up and I followed suit. “You recognise the view?”

I remembered a carpet of ancient trees. “The parapet outside the roof garden is above us?” 

He murmured accord.

“But there was only the faintest gleam of water visible in the distance from up there.” I gestured towards the terrace steps. “No wide river. No landing. No terrace.”

He smiled. “Well, you were nearer the eastern corner, so the perspective wasn’t advantageous…” He plucked the end of a rose cane that had snagged the sleeve of his shirt and ran its thorns along his forefinger. Dark drops of blood bloomed on his skin. He wiped them onto the bark and the cane curled away.

I grabbed his hand, bit my lip and kissed the torn skin. When I drew away, the scratches were gone. When I looked up, he winked at me, tilted his head towards the river steps and disappeared behind the urn redolent with spring flowers.

_Perspective?_

No.

Nevertheless, I followed. Turning sideways to slip behind the chest-high urn that I had clearly seen touching the pillar supporting the balustrade moments before. Thus, we progressed, from urn to urn, until we were close to the east side of the steps leading down to the river landing. Sherlock placed a hand on the balustrade’s rail and hopped atop it, swivelling in a crouch, then easing down until he sat straddling it. He curled his fingers at me.

“Right,” I mumbled and clambered up in front of him.

“Turn around,” he whispered, “and we’ll both have a good view.”

Despite a good view of how far it was to the ground, I scrambled about and settled against him, temple brushing against his cheek. He was already commenting about the guests departing from the portion of the landing visible from our perch.

“…as good an archer as you.”

I was sorry to have missed the first part of what he'd had to say about the silver-haired woman stepping into the boat.

The mist shrouding the far bank was lifting as dawn approached, revealing the animals and carriages waiting under the trees by the road there. Wisps of fog broke away and swirled over the water, hiding the ferryman’s boat for a few moments as it crossed, leaving the disembodied voices of the passengers to mark their progress to those waiting on the steps or about the terrace for their turns.

I recognised the ferryman whom I had assumed was Magnus’s man. 

_As I keep telling you…_

Yes, yes. I am too often wrong.

Sherlock explained that the boatman or one of his brothers was always poling on the part of the river that ran through the Manor and would have been waiting for late-comers on the other bank on an evening such as this. Being late was bad form, he added, but someone always was.

“So, one of those carriages will go unclaimed,” I said, “or a horse, at least.”

“The coachman left long ago with it. I’m surprised you didn’t notice; he wasn’t quiet about it.”

“My focus was elsewhere,” I countered.

“Point taken,” he said and continued identifying the best archers among the guests getting into the boat.

He had been right. It was enjoyable sitting in the fresh air watching the parade of leave-takers with the sound of Sherlock’s voice in my ear offering his biographies of those I had only glimpsed during the evening. I felt myself relaxing and the temptation to sleep reasserted itself.

_Too far to the ground._

Good point.

Sherlock’s arm tightened across my chest. I closed my hand over his. 

On the opposite bank, a chattering group were being helped into their carriage. “What kind of horses are those?” I asked, squinting.

“Observe.”

The voices of the guests were lost to us when the driver closed the carriage door. He mounted the wheel and sprang to his bench atop the vehicle, his seated form lit by the flickering green lights of the carriage lanterns. He called to his team in a high, sharp voice that carried clearly across the water. 

Her.

_Assumptions, Watson. Assumptions._

A pair of sleek animals, harnessed single file, trotted briskly east in front of the carriage with two creatures tethered behind. I assumed their journey must be long to bring two relief horses for the team doing the pulling. After a couple furlongs, all four creatures spread wings. The carriage rose into the air.

I inhaled sharply. Assumptions! Against my cheek, I felt Sherlock’s smile. 

“And there,” he whispered, pointing towards the southwestern corner of the roof. 

Outlined against the sinking moon, a sturdily-formed creature sat upon the parapet. It reared and bounded into the air, forelimbs outstretched, back arched and tail streaming behind.

I winced. “He won’t make it to the river.”

_Open your mind wider, Watson._

Wings unfurled, gleaming in the moonlight. The creature swooped low across the water, up the bank on the other side, and landed under the trees, wings folding against its sides.

“What…” A rush of air ruffled my hair. I looked up as a tail passed so close above my head that I could see the texture of the fur along its length and the iridescent feathers with which it was tipped. The downbeat of enormous wings blew something bright towards me. Reflexively, my hand darted out and closed about it.

“Well done,” Sherlock whispered. “Griffin feathers are potent.”

“Right.” I unclenched my fingers enough to look at my catch.

“A mark of great favour, John.”

I regarded the curved, downy plume on my palm, its shaft silvery, its vane opalescent. “How can you tell it’s for me?” I asked, although I had no inclination to relinquish it to some hypothetical intended recipient.

“It belongs to the one quick enough to catch it and they intended that to be you. You’ve made many friends tonight.”

“And enemies?” 

“We out-danced them,” he said.

“Out-bled them, too.” My head was still a bit light from it, but I managed to shift enough to put the feather deep into one of my pockets. That accomplished, I let my head fall back against Sherlock’s shoulder and returned my attention to the spectacle of leave-taking.

***

Near the top of the stairs, in languages I didn’t know, Sherlock’s parents were bidding their guests a cordial good-night. Mycroft stood to one side, leaning against the balustrade, nodding at times in silent accord and gazing out over the crowd at others. No one intruded on his apparent distraction by addressing him. If he acknowledged them, they nodded to him in return; if he didn’t, they nodded to themselves and passed on. I wondered for whom he was searching; who it was they all seemed to know needed to be found.

I, too, should have known, but the hyacinths were giving up their scent, Sherlock was firm against my back, and the dull ache to which the injury in my shoulder had faded seemed to pulse in time with his breathing. 

I stroked the bare arm with which he held me, reached back with my other hand and curled my fingers about his neck. His skin was cool; the scales of his serpent cooler as they brushed against my knuckles in their circuit about his throat. Mine became restless, also, twining back and forth around my neck. I thought they might be anxious about the same person for whom Mycroft searched, and so I joined in his surveillance without knowing for whom, my drowsiness gone. 

Thus, we were arrayed, when I saw Wiggins wending through the guests to Mycroft’s side. Whatever he whispered in Mycroft’s ear made him raise an eyebrow and nod. Wiggins slipped back into the throng. Mycroft leaned towards his mother, then straightened and headed the way Wiggins had. I glimpsed the top of Wiggins’ head going into the ballroom. Mycroft appeared before us.

“Brother, dear.”

Sherlock hummed an acknowledgement, but did not turn his head.

“I’ve been informed that we have a guest who will not be leaving.”

Sherlock stiffened behind me, his arm drawing away. He stood.

I looked back over my shoulder.

“John,” he said before pivoting on the balustrade and striding away along it to the side of the house.

My eyes opened wide. I knew how far down it was. 

I glanced at Mycroft. 

“As a child, he would run along here,” Mycroft said. “It’s how he first fle…” He interrupted himself. “Shall we?” Mycroft gestured towards the crowd. 

_Too slow._

Yeah.

I drew my knees up under me, caught sight of Sherlock hopping off the balustrade onto the terrace near the windows where we had been sitting. I stood up, ignored the urge to look down and followed him. When I jumped down onto the terrace, Mycroft was sailing over the threshold of the centre doors. Through the side doors, I could see Sherlock standing in the middle of the ballroom, in the middle of our pattern, its lines and curves glowing only faintly about him, its border mere embers that with a crackle threw a few sparks. Sherlock ignored them. All his attention was focussed on something at his feet.

I ran to him. 

Mycroft appeared next to him.

We all stared.

Wild-eyed Jim would hunger no more. 

He lay on his back, one arm flung to the side, the other bent, its hand at the base of his throat. A silver knife, with a twisted blade and a moonstone surmounting its hilt, protruded from his left eye. 

_Your silver dagger._

My hand went to my hip. My silver dagger was there.

_Its twin…_

His other eye looked straight up. His lips, rather than being drawn back in a rictus of agony, seemed to smirk at us. Considering how close the quillons were to his brow, the blade was likely to have reached the back of his skull. He couldn’t be alive, and yet his open eye was so clear, the blow must have been dealt only minutes before. 

I had begun to kneel when Sherlock gripped my arm, keeping me upright.

“Don’t touch him.”

“But if he’s alive? People have survived stranger injuries.”

“Look at the blood,” Sherlock replied, his narrowed eyes focussing away from the body and that oddly-composed face.

I followed his gaze and saw how the blood was spattering as it dripped from where Jim…

_Death put you on a first-name basis?_

He isn’t quite as wild-eyed now.

…was suspended several centimetres above the floor. 

_Rather a major thing to miss._

The knife in the eyeball was somewhat distracting. 

I breathed in; my eyes opened wider and my nose wrinkled. Floating corpses were not the worst of it. 

“Sherlock.” 

The blood was following the tracery of our lines through the air above them and turning an ashen grey as it proceeded. From them, a faint odour of charred flesh rose up. 

It called forth memories. They came in swarms.

_Steady, Watson. The danger’s here, right now. Concentrate._

Out of the corner of my eye, something gleamed. Sherlock had drawn his dagger, the twin to mine.

_No, the triplet._

Before I could stop him, he extended his hand and sliced along his forearm. I winced at the pain. He turned the arm and let his blood fall, walking slowly in a circle so the drops fell ahead of the burning lines.

I grimaced and gripped my arm. When he approached from my other side, I stepped back so he could complete his circle. 

He kept going.

_Good thing there’s blood in the freezer._

Yes.

Jim’s blood reached the boundary Sherlock had made. There, it bubbled and hissed, but went no further.

Sherlock made another circuit. Dark stains reared off the floor; crept along the ashen lines in the air until they reached Jim’s body. His clothes began to smoulder.

I took another step back, raising my sleeve to my nose, but the smell of charred meat and singed hair didn’t come. 

The garments fell away, the flesh peeled back, revealing the dark heart boiling in its cage of white bone. The flames rose higher, but they gave no heat, only the smell of burnt cloth. 

I let my arm drop to my side. 

The heart sizzled, the bones cracked and crumbled to ash. The flames flickered over them, flared around the still upright dagger and then, even the ash was gone. The dagger clattered to the floor.

Wind blew in through the open doors, pulling the curtains from their ties, ruffling the table linens and swirling the acrid fumes away.

Sherlock stooped to retrieve the knife. He rotated it between his fingers. The silver was very bright; it flashed as it turned.

I couldn’t look away. “I thought it was mine.” 

“A brother to yours,” Sherlock said, gaze fixed on it. “I gave it to him when we were children. It was one of the first I made.”

I looked up then.

_Another Holmes?_

“A second cousin, on our mother’s mother’s side,” Mycroft said. 

My eyes shifted to him. I had nearly forgotten he was there, so silent and still had he been. He was watching Sherlock.

_He seems taller than before._

I glanced at his feet. He wasn’t standing on the floor.

“Formerly, it was customary for cousins to marry. If there was one of a suitable age, they would be the preferred match,” Mycroft continued.

“He flaunted customs, derided old habits,” Sherlock said, “except for that one. He took a fancy to the idea that I was destined to be his. When I expressed my disinclination, he said he’d wait, because we were the only two who weren’t boring and I would realise that eventually.”

“He was exceptionally good at concealment.” Mycroft sighed. “It took us a long time to discover what he was doing to alleviate his boredom while he waited.” 

“But he never used my knife.” Sherlock flipped the dagger again. “Until now.”

“He needed something of yours to make the spell work,” Mycroft said.

“Spell?” I repeated, rather stupidly. It was a lot to take in.

_The stupidity is still feeling jealous. He is extremely gone._

Gone or not, he had all those years of knowing Sherlock that I can never have. He had them.

“He was trying to join us,” Sherlock explained, “to add himself to our pattern before it faded.”

My throat constricted. “But you stopped him in time,” I managed to whisper and didn’t dare make it a question. 

“I interrupted his attempt, but upon reflection, I don’t think it could have worked even if I hadn’t intervened.” Sherlock glanced at Mycroft’s feet and one side of his mouth lifted slightly.

I spared a quick look, but Mycroft was as I had already seen and I didn’t really care whether he was a centimetre off the floor or a kilometre. My eyes returned to Sherlock’s face.

“Why?” I asked on an exhale and there was far more of relief than curiosity in my question.

“He couldn’t touch our design." Sherlock began to pace as he talked. "Culvert altered what we did. Blood wasn't needed to weave our spell. Two patterns, danced correctly together…” His eyes flickered over me. “…with passion to seal them, was all that was required.”

“But when I excised the leech and you bled…”

“A little.” 

“…and I bled—”

“A lot. It strengthened the seal.” He spun the knife while he paced; it flashed as it turned. He caught it by the hilt and stopped, staring at it. “You’d already created a barrier at the perimeter…” He raised a forefinger and looked over his shoulder. “Unlike me, Jim would have needed a running start to vault over it…” Sherlock walked to the edge and looked back at the centre.

_You didn’t jump over anything._

I scowled and stared at Sherlock. Stray phrases about heights and run-up distances reached me, but mainly I listened to the music of his voice rising and falling. He stood so tall, his arms sweeping through the air with his words. I had pushed through something to get to him; nothing I’d spared a thought about then, but it had felt like hitting a cross-wind on a bridge. 

_Maybe the barrier was fading._

I shook my head; not if Sherlock chose to leap over it rather than open a gap in it. Maybe why I wanted to get through mattered.

_Or which side of it Sherlock was on._

I made it to protect him.

_To protect both of you._

Him.

I pressed my fist against my mouth and shut my eyes against the memory of Sherlock folding in on himself while the shadows edged towards the fragile outline of our unfinished design.

_Barricade._

Barricade.

“If Jim realised he hadn't landed on the floor, he would have been surprised..." Sherlock strode back towards the centre. “And he would have needed to improvise…” 

_That wasn’t a look of surprise on his face._

No. 

I took a step towards Sherlock and stumbled. Too much had happened that was way beyond my ken.

_Maybe it’s just blood loss._

Yeah, and that.

Somehow, he was beside me, an arm under one of mine. “You should sit,” he urged and made to slip the dagger under his belt.

My hand darted out. “Wait,” I said, fingers closing around the blade. “Let me.”

Sherlock peered at me, brow furrowed, and then opened his fingers and let me have the knife.

I heard Mycroft draw in a breath; he took a step closer.

_What are you doing?_

Shh.

I held it loosely; I didn’t want it to cut me. I grasped the hilt with my other hand, carefully released the blade, adjusted my grip, trying to find the fit.

It wasn’t there.

I dropped it onto the palm of my other hand. Felt for the balance. It wasn’t like mine. It wouldn’t throw true. I gripped the hilt. It didn’t fit to my left hand either.

_Because it isn’t your dagger._

They look so similar.

_But they aren’t the same._

I started to smile.

“John?”

“It fell to the floor.”

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow.

“If he was in it somehow, the barrier wouldn’t have let it through,” I said in a rush.

“What makes you so sure?” Sherlock asked, eyes trained on me.

_Yeah, how can you be sure?_

“I can’t be, I suppose.” I traced a finger down the middle of the blade. It felt cold. I closed my eyes and saw a trough filled with snow. “You tried quenching the blade in snow then thought it might break…you were on the roof, on the ledge outside the wall...” The sky was a pearly grey, a lone figure stood dark against the glow of a fire. My finger slid past the tip of the blade. The image was gone. I opened my eyes.

Sherlock was still staring at me. “I was. There are old ovens there used for melting lead to pour on anyone attempting to scale the walls.

“And you weren’t supposed to be using any of them,” Mycroft added.

I glanced at him. He, too, was staring at me.

I looked back at Sherlock and held out the knife.

Sherlock took it back.

Once he had, I regretted not having stroked the blade once more before relinquishing it, to catch another glimpse of a Sherlock I could never know.

_A master of concealment, remember._

Giving me a glimpse of something I want to disguise his presence? To distract me? 

_Maybe. But a true vision nonetheless._

Effective move then, because I am distracted. All those moments he had that can never be mine. 

_And yet you want them._

Can’t have them.

Mycroft removed a glove and extended his hand.

Sherlock offered the knife, hilt first and Mycroft took it with his bared hand, held it as though weighing it. “I think John may be right,” he said with a smile that was barely there. He passed the blade back to Sherlock and turned to me. “Well done, brother.”

*** 

It had feet up on the cushions of the window seat once again. Feet up, head down. There might have been an interval of light-headedness. Sherlock might have dragged me over here.

I hoped no more would be required of me for a while, but if it was, I’d find the energy somewhere. 

_Adrenaline has always been your friend._

Shut up.

How can a voice smirk?

I closed my eyes and felt the faint tingle that followed Sherlock’s fingertips brushing to and fro across my shoulders.

“Breath, John.”

The air was untainted there, the curtains swaying gently with the breeze off the water. Outside, the leaves whispered. The voices of the last guests floated across the river.

I let my head hang lower. “The leaves are talking about what happened.”

“They do little else,” Sherlock murmured, rubbing wide circles over my back.

“If you'll excuse me, I'd best give our parents a more accurate summary of our kinsman's demise,” Mycroft said and stepped past me and out through the windows.

“How can I hear leaves speaking?”

Sherlock sat down beside me, his hand still tracing lines and curves across my back. “The ones above your ears are rather close.” 

I wanted to look at him, but my vision wavered when I tried lifting my head.

Sherlock’s hand moved to the back of my neck and on into my hair. 

“Aren’t those dead?” I asked.

“Not at all. If you feel up to it tomorrow night, we can plant them in the forest, or in the park, if you prefer – anywhere you like. The twigs will root and leaf, and they’ll never tire of telling the tale because they’ll be able to say they were here. That will give them precedence over the ones that only heard it on the wind.”

I managed to turn my head enough to get a glimpse of his profile, wan in the last light of the setting moon. He was looking out across the room, but I doubted that was what he was seeing.

“You’re not taking the piss, are you?”

His fingertips rubbed against my scalp. It was very soothing. My head drooped lower.

He huffed a little laugh. “No. There are a lot of things you’ll be able to do after tonight. Pledging - betrothal, changes people…or so the songs say.”

“We’re betrothed now?”

_That’s why Mycroft called you ‘brother’, Watson. You are slow tonight._

Hey, blood loss.

“Which is fine, by the way,” I added. More than fine. Far, far more than fine. I almost felt as though I could lift my head.

“I know it’s fine,” Sherlock said, one fingertip tracing around the back of my ear. “It only works if it’s fine.”

_But since you are so slow, shouldn’t he have explained that that was what tonight was about?_

Well, he did, I suppose, just not in so many words.

“All who challenged our choice were defeated tonight. And we have witnesses to that.”

“You have, indeed,” Lord Holmes said, stepping down into the ballroom through the next windows and holding out his hand to Lady Holmes behind him. “The birds were chirping about nothing else. The tales will be everywhere before the sun is up.”

“You have brought great honour to your name,” Lady Holmes added, drawing near. “An auspicious debut to your career.” 

_Pretty shoes._

I dropped my feet to the floor and managed to lift my head without keeling over. “Debut?” I echoed, which wasn’t at all what I had intended to come out of my mouth.

_A polite thank-you would have been more appropriate, Watson._

“Sherlock thought it too soon to bring you out, but so many were already talking,” she said and reached out to touch his hair. “He wanted to give you more time to grow into your strengths, but it would not have been to your advantage to have rivals springing upon you unawares. Best to gather them here…” She looked up at the musicians’ gallery and higher to the ceiling. 

My eyes followed hers and saw that the stars were fading from the frescoes as a rosy glow brightened the fresco.

“…where more of the rules would need to be followed in front of so many witnesses and where the music would be ours.” She looked down at me solemnly. “You’ve done very well…” A small smile brightened her expression for a moment as she added those syllables that I had heard when we met, then pulled a ring from her forefinger and held it up as though to be certain it was the one she wanted. It had a stone that twinkled even in the dim light, encircled by smaller jewels. “I’ve always thought they resembled a flower, so it will suit you.” She held it out towards me and I lifted my right hand, small finger raised slightly and she slipped the ring onto it. 

_You’re amassing quite the collection of rings. I pity the next bloke you punch._

That one would leave a very distinctive imprint.

I wasn’t even surprised that it fit. When I moved my hand, and it seemed to grow brighter.

“I gave Sherlock his when he was very young, because he was always exploring the darkest of dark corners,” she continued.

I glanced at Sherlock then. He was looking at my newest ring and seemed pleased. He twisted the ring on his little finger around so the stones faced palmwards and closed his fist, but I’d already seen its sparkle.

I nodded.

His father stepped closer and put his arm around Sherlock’s shoulder. “Your skill has grown since last I watched you. Never would I have believed Magnus could be lured into the river. He always appeared impervious to magic. So many have tried.” He shook his head. “I tried.”

Sherlock turned to his father, covered the hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think it was magic that blinded him.” His eyes slid towards me.

_Bait and trap all in one._

I could feel my face flushing. I banished the last of the vertigo and I sat up straighter.

Lord Holmes lifted his chin, eyebrows raised and glanced from Sherlock to me and back. “Howe’er achieved, so many people are grateful that he is gone.”

_Papa Holmes chief among them._

The lines in his face were far less deep than when the evening began.

“So many departed lighter of spirit than when they arrived, and said so again and again as they bid us and you both, farewell.” He inclined his head in my direction. “You may have trouble finding places for the all the gifts.”

Sherlock slipped his hand beneath his father’s, turned his head and kissed the back of his father’s hand.

The setting moon glimmered silver in the older Holmes’s eyes.

Lady Holmes touched her husband’s shoulder and the silvery drape of her sleeve gleamed. “River could never abide anyone hurting our boys.” She fixed her eyes on her husband. “You see, it was well worth giving birth to them in the River, storm or no storm.”

_A lightning storm?_

“The lightning was rather invigorating.”

Yup. Lightning.

“Your family always did do things differently,” Lord Holmes said with a trace of sadness in his voice.

Lady Holmes sighed and walked away, towards the faint glow of our design. “Yes.” She stopped at the edge of the pattern. 

“Oh, James. You chose your path early and no one could persuade you to change direction.” She lifted the hem of her robe, stepped over the sputtering border and glided, a few centimetres above the floor, to the centre. She stared at the thistles beginning to flower beneath her feet. “It was never going to end well for you.”

She looked over her shoulder at Sherlock. “At least, you weren’t tempted to go with him.”

Sherlock went to her. “But I was. The summers when he visited France were such fun. In was much later, in the darkest corners, that I learned things that convinced me that his side wasn’t mine.”

He had reached where she stood. 

She stroked down his what was left of his tattered sleeve. “I’m sorry, Sherlock. There was so much we didn’t see. That we didn’t protect you from.”

“It was his art – to remain unseen.” Sherlock took the dagger that matched mine from his belt and held it out to her. “This was all that remained of him. Keep it safe.”

She took it, her hand dropping as though it was too heavy for her. The light refracting through her jewels shivered along the floor and walls. “I’ll keep it safe.” It disappeared beneath her cloak. She glanced back at me. “Go, care for your betrothed, Sherlock. He spilt more of his blood than he should have.”

“He is still new to it,” Sherlock said quickly. “I healed him as soon as I could.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “I know. He was thinking with his heart and it saved you both.” She rose on her toes and whispered something to Sherlock I couldn’t hear.

Sherlock looked away a moment, but when he glanced back I could see he was smiling.

“We’d stay with you longer, but there are the polar skies to paint,” she said, “and your father has spring blizzards to bestow along the way. He’s always liked the spring ones best.”

Sherlock held out his arm from beneath my cloak. It was streaked with dried blood, but his mother rested her arm along it as though it were swathed in silver brocade. Together, they crossed the room to Lord Holmes and me.

I shouldn’t have liked to take my eyes from them, so regal they looked, but a clatter and a gust of wind from behind me caused me to whirl around, dagger drawn.

_Wonders not over for the night._

Apparently not.

_Close your mouth._

Right. 

There were four impatient creatures tossing their heads and stamping their hooves on the terrace. The paving stones rang with their blows and threw sparks up about their feet. Their antlers gleamed silver in the twilight and the white and grey feathers of their wings reminded me of the infinite variety of pigeons, if pigeons had wings that folded like swans’ wings and were several metres across.

_What are they?_

Flying deer?

_Look at their hind legs._

Oh. 

_Yeah, oh._

They were long, nearly featherless and sturdy like an ostrich’s legs, but the talons that were scraping against the stone were at the tips of wide, webbed feet.

“Perytons,” Lord Holmes said, looking out at the creatures. “Difficult to handle, but incredibly fast.”

I mumbled something and nodded.

_You could ask what kind of speed he’s talking about._

No, no I couldn’t.

“Siròc likes to fly with them, but she can’t keep up for long.”

“Ah.”

“When she was younger, that used to upset her. Now she swoops past us a few times, then rides on on Duneyrr, acting as navigator because she can see so much farther.” He glanced down at me. “She thinks well of you.”

My brows went up and I turned to meet his eyes, wishing I knew how exactly she communicated and if I’d ever be able to understand. “That’s kind of her.”

He shook his head. “Not at all. She says what she means.”

The stag in front lifted up his head and roared. Before the sound had faded, a pale blur streaked from the roof and, with outstretched talons, Siròc landed on the beast’s topmost antler. 

I was making a guess, no a deduction, about that stag being Duneyrr, and a moment later my deduction was confirmed.

“Aurora, Siròc has arrived and Duneyrr has sniffed out a strong current.”

Lady Holmes glanced out the window. “One could hardly fail to hear.”

Siròc was fluttering from stag to stag. Their stamping had subsided, various huffs and snorts taking their place. Duneyrr turned towards the open windows and lowered his head.

“You see, Borrum. He can be diplomatic,” Lady Holmes remarked.

“To you, perhaps,” Lord Holmes conceded.

“Oh, I think it’s _Cerno-on-os_ he welcomes with such gentility,” she said.

_There’s that word again._

I heard it much more clearly this time.

Lady Holmes placed her hand on my shoulder. “We are all pleased you have found your way back to us.”

Sherlock cleared his throat.

Lady Holmes smiled at him. “Or that _you_ found him for us. Whichever way it was, it is good that he is with you, Sherlock.” 

There was another roar from the terrace.

Lord Holmes nodded to me and stepped up onto the window seat next and over the window sill.

The cool weight of Lady Holmes’ hand disappeared from my shoulder. Its ache vanished with it. “Best not to lose the current.”

She tilted her head downwards, eyes narrowed, as I have so often seen Sherlock do, and looked from Sherlock to me and back. With an icy fingertip, she tapped my cheek. “Heal well, _Cerno-on-os_. Glistening skirts swept past me and out the doors.

The perytons stamped and reared, but through the uproar, I thought I heard her voice saying, “Good for all of us.” 

*** 

The terrace and the hall were empty. There was no slash of oars on the river, clop of hooves on the rode nor beat of prodigious wings through the air. The last ripples of green and ruby light had faded from the dome of the sky. The moon, too, was gone; between the trees the still air was tinged with pink. Even the birds had departed, no doubt to tell their tales elsewhere.

Against my back, I felt little warmth from Sherlock. He took a deep breath. “Could you stand?”

I considered; sent a signal to my limbs that received no response. “No.” 

My head was upright because of Sherlock’s supporting shoulder. It was the position from which I had watched the elder Holmeses depart, their conveyance borne aloft by silent wings and trailing an aurora such as I only dreamt I would ever see. 

“You need to sleep.”

“For a few days,” I agreed. My eyes closed.

“Not here,” he murmured. “We need to go deep.”

I shivered again. He was getting colder. “You, too.”

His curls brushed past my cheek when he nodded. “Me, too.”

I shifted in his arms and exhaled. “I’ll be able to walk down in a bit.”

*** 

“They’re all knotted,” I grumbled as I struggled with the ribbons at the cuffs. “Why on earth does there need to be three on each sleeve?” I dropped my arms to my sides and slumped back on the stone bench in the antechamber of the hammam. I turned to watch Sherlock remove garment after garment as though it were some type of dance and drop them into a tall basket beside the bench opposite me.

“It is,” he said.

_You really must ask him about the mind reading._

Possibly, I don’t want to know.

He was down to his hose and the long linen shirt, whose tails hid more of his form than I would have wished. He lifted a foot to the seat of the bench and untied the bow of one garter with a pinch of his fingers and a quick motion of his wrist. He let the ribbon flutter onto the clothes already overflowing from the basket. Deftly, he rolled the silk hose, which must have been as plastered to him as my clothes were to me, down and off his foot.

It is a lovely foot, though often cold.

I watched the muscles of his calf flex. The stocking landed on the top of the heap of garments and he switched legs. I caught a glimpse of what hung between his thighs. The damned shirt tails kept me from seeing more.

_You could go sit closer._

Not sure I can move at all. Used up the reserves getting down here.

I plucked ineffectually at the snarled ribbons. I may have whined.

“I could call Wiggins to help you with those,” Sherlock said as he slipped his second stocking off.

Untapped reserves were found. I sat up straighter. “No, no, I can manage.” I scowled at the satin ribbons and considered using one of my knives on the things.

Sherlock turned towards me, his hands gathering the hem of his shirt. “You could sing them off, you know.”

I looked up at him. I had never thought to use the open spell on clothing.

_Would have been handy in your younger days, Watson.”_

Might be handy right now. 

Sherlock lifted the shirt over his head, turning at the waist as it came off to fling it at the basket. When he turned back, he met my enrapt stare. 

“’But Beauty’s self he is, when all his clothes are gone,’” I recited. 

“You’ve taken some liberties with the lyrics, but I doubt the poet would mind,” Sherlock said, stretching. 

Ah. 

My lips parted, but I seemed unable to sing or even hum and my clothes remained stickily upon me, except for my tunic and shoes which I had succeeded in divesting with the little dexterity remaining to me. 

Sherlock bent for some reason. 

Oh. 

He stood tall again, one hand extended out from his shoulder, the other moving as though it plied a bow. He walked towards me. 

I heard a melody, sibilant and soft. 

At my wrists, knots were tugging apart. My cuffs fell open. Around my legs, the garters loosened. 

“Shall I carry on?” 

I nodded. 

“Raise your arms, then.” 

I did and, as though a breeze had found its way inside of it, my shirt ballooned out and drifted off over my head. I watched it float to the empty basket by my bench and fall in. 

“That was rather nice,” I said, holding my arms out and rotating them a little and twisting my wrists. I rubbed my fingertips over my palms. “It felt…” I considered my hands. “I’ve felt…” 

“It’s how it feels when I touch you in your dreams,” Sherlock said. 

I inhaled. He’d never admitted that before. 

“Hold out a leg.” 

I shifted to the edge of the bench and lifted one leg and then the other. 

The garters fell away. The silk rolled smoothly from my thighs downwards. When I closed my eyes, I could just feel fingertips brushing along my skin as it went. I flexed my liberated toes. 

_But his touch wasn’t always so delicate in your dreams._

Silence! 

_How you clung to the memory of each sensation. How often you replayed them with your hands taking the role of his._

I felt the heat spreading from my cheeks, down my throat to my chest. 

“Stand.” 

I complied and opened my eyes, but feigned an interest in my final disrobing rather than meet Sherlock’s penetrating glance. 

_So what if he knows that you lusted after him from the moment you set eyes on him?_

Because it’s more. And I thought it was just my libido fuelling those dreams. 

_Be glad, you idiot! Apparently, he couldn’t have you, in the flesh, as it were, until you’d made it through that first month, but now you know he wanted to._

I must have been scarlet up to the roots of my hair. In all the time since, I’d never spoken of the unremitting desire I’d endured during those first weeks. I didn’t want him to think my passion was only lustful. 

_Like it usually is. Lust’s a big part of your soul._

____

____

The ribbon at my waist untied itself and the drawers dropped to my feet. I stepped away and a glissando whisked them into the basket. The tunic followed them from off the bench. 

“Pity about the tunic,” I mumbled. 

_What a sweet talker, Watson._

Just need a minute to regroup. Is that what’s at the core of me? Am I nothing but a carnal beast? 

Sherlock licked his fingertips and rubbed them over the dried blood on my chest. 

No help there. 

“Wiggins will bring the clothes back to the stitchers. They’ll be right as rain after the first good storm,” he replied, leaning close, voice low. 

I looked sideways up at him. 

His serpent uncoiled from around his neck and spiralled down his arm. Sherlock’s gaze dropped from my eyes to my mouth. 

Oh, the things he has done to me with his. 

Temperature escalating. 

“How…what are the stitchers?” 

_Barely plausible curiosity._

His hand smoothed over my chest. “Hmm. You haven’t met them yet.” Cool fingers stroked against my heated skin and I shivered. 

_Go with candour, Watson. Lust is a big part of you, but he knows there’s more._

His serpent scrabbled up to my shoulder, hissing softly. The claws of both serpents dug into my skin when they took flight. 

I winced. 

Sherlock smoothed over the scratches. “Stitchers look like dragonflies - devil’s darning needles, some call them, but they don’t darn; they stitch. And when their work needs cleansing, they fly out with it into the rain, the stormier the better.” 

“It would take thousands of insects to lift a cloak,” I said, not totally comfortable with the image forming in my mind. 

“Thousands of ordinary insects, yes.” His fingers trailed down my sides, around to my spine. “But they’re larger and stronger than most of the dragonflies you’ve seen…I imagine.” He leaned away to look at my eyes. “Never totally sure what you see, John Watson.” 

All I saw was him. 

_Candour._

“I see you,” I said and rose on my toes to kiss him. 

*** 


End file.
